Chapter 22 Asher #2
“Eva, I’m going to…” I try to warn her, try to be decent about it, but she doesn’t pull away. She takes me deeper, hollows her cheeks, and hums. The vibration sends me over the edge.
I come with her name in my mouth and her name on repeat in my head and my fingers buried in her hair and my vision going white at the edges. It rolls through me in waves—release and relief and something bigger, something that feels like breaking a wall I’ve been bracing against for years.
When my breathing steadies, she pulls away, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and rises from the tile. She leans against the counter, looking extremely pleased with herself.
I stare at her. My body is still humming, my brain rebooting, and she’s pivoted to career planning like she didn’t just take me apart on her knees.
“Come here,” I say.
Something in my tone makes her pupils blow wide.
She steps closer and I pull her onto my lap, my pants still around my thighs, her legs straddling mine on the toilet seat.
It’s not graceful. The porcelain is cold under my ass, and her knee bumps the toilet paper holder.
But she’s here, in my arms, her weight solid and real against me.
“Thank you,” I say, and I don’t just mean the orgasm. I mean the shave. The career suggestion. The way she refuses to let me spiral into self-pity. The way she makes me feel wanted.
“You’re welcome.” She cups my smooth jaw in both hands. “Wow, you really do have a face under there. My boyfriend is so hot.”
“Your boyfriend wants to make you come.” I slide my hand beneath the hem of her shirt and trail my fingers up her ribs. She shivers. I find the weight of her breast and palm it, thumbing across the peaked nipple. She gasps and rocks forward.
I slip my hand down her stomach, beneath the waistband of her jeans, and find her already wet. The discovery sends a jolt through me so intense my spent cock stirs against her thigh.
“Oh,” she breathes, her forehead dropping to my shoulder.
I stroke her the way she shaved my face—slow, deliberate, paying attention to what makes her breath catch. Two fingers slide inside her easily, and my thumb circles her clit. She moans against my neck, her hips rocking to meet my hand.
“That’s it,” I murmur. “I’ve got you.”
“Asher…” Her voice is high, breathy. She grips my shoulders, nails digging in. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I keep the pressure steady, the rhythm constant, curling my fingers slightly on each stroke. Her whole body tenses, thighs clamping around mine, back arching, mouth open against my skin.
She comes with a sound I want to record and play back every morning for the rest of my life.
A broken, beautiful, unguarded cry that reverberates off the tile and straight into my chest. Her inner muscles pulse around my fingers as she rides it out, her body shuddering against mine, and I hold her through every last tremor.
We sit there for a long moment afterward, tangled on the toilet seat, catching our breath.
It’s hard to pull myself together for family dinner, but Eva seems desperate to be there, hand in hand, a real couple. The Bedds are going to be smug about us, but I suppose there are worse things.
I drive us in the golf cart, and we enter the farmhouse to the usual chaos of children and dogs and bickering siblings. Gran glances at our clasped hands and beams like she’s responsible, which…I guess she is.
Lia waves at me from the couch, where she’s nursing Porter and half-watching Ethan attempt to keep another Bedd kid from feeding crackers to the dogs. I feel the familiar pang of being grateful that Lia is alive and well and making this kind of life with my oldest friend.
“You shaved,” Lia says, eyes widening.
“I do groom myself.”
“You literally haven’t been groomed in months.” She shifts Porter to her shoulder for a burp. “You look human. I approve.”
Eva is immediately absorbed into the kitchen orbit, pulled in by Colleen asking about marketing strategy for the restaurant and Molly wanting advice on image filters for Udderly Creamy’s website.
I watch Eva fold into these conversations like she’s been here forever, and am stunned to realize my response to this is … contentment. Huh.
Samuel drops into the chair beside me and slides a cold bottle across the table. The label reads Eye of the Storm—Eila’s beer, apparently. I take a sip and nod my approval.
“Heard you’re in a spot,” Sam says, because the Bedd family has never once, in their collective history, beaten around a bush.
“News travels.”
He strokes his beard—well-maintained and apparently acceptable. “So, what’s the deal? Meow Mobile’s done?”
I take a longer pull off the beer. “Meow Mobile got acquired. They kept the mission, but they don’t need me.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Samuel is quiet for a moment, watching his kids weave through the dining room table legs. Sam’s always been the thinker of the Bedd siblings.
“You know my buddy, Josh?” Sam says, in the tone of someone who’s been waiting for the right moment to bring this up.
“Josh who?”
“Josh Harmon. He works at Trede.”
I guess I knew Sam was friends with someone from the incubator who initially got Meow Mobile the funding. I’m not sure why I’d want anything to do with them now. Sam nods. “Josh is management there. I could introduce you, if you want.”
I take a long swig from my beer. “I’m not sure what good that would do.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Trede is a big company. I bet they have in-house tech jobs. Someone runs their website, I’m sure.”
My mind spins. I’m still not over the hospital suggestion, and now Samuel wants me to network.
But I also know that’s going to be what I need to do to find another job.
I’m going to have to go to interviews. This is more of a nightmare than I let myself imagine.
I slump forward and rest my head on Gran’s table.
A hand claps me on the back. Maybe Sam’s. “Josh is a good guy. He’s normal. You’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll just set the two of you down at Tiddy’s or something.”
Before I can respond, Ethel calls everyone to the table, and they come like a stampede of bison. Chairs scrape, dogs bark, and I sit myself up, holding my beer out of reach of the Hotman twins until I’m wedged between Eva and Samuel, Eva’s knee pressed reassuringly against mine under the table.
Across the table, Ethan catches my eye and tilts his head—the universal Ethan Bedd gesture for you okay?
I consider the question and realize I am, in fact, okay. Better than. I raise my beer to him, smile, and drape an arm around Eva’s shoulders.
Eva’s hand finds mine under the table. She squeezes once—quick, certain—and then lets go so she can use both hands to shovel roast chicken and carrots onto her plate.
I catch my sister smiling at me, and I stick my tongue out at her, but my heart’s not in it and I laugh. And then I keep laughing until the sound is folded into the surrounding conversation in this cantankerous family who absorbed me and Eva alike.
The drive back through the trees is quiet, the sky bright with stars. Eva tucks herself against me, and I pull her close as we both grab the golf cart wheel to navigate around some tree roots.
“Hey, Asher?” Eva murmurs against my shoulder.
“Mm?”
“You’re going to be great at whatever comes next.”
I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe in the smell of sunshine and citrus and Eva. “I’m starting to believe you.”