Chapter 30
Thirty
Ezra
Ican’t stop staring.
I can’t stop staring at the woman who hates my guts, yet was the one to give me the best sex of my entire twenty-six years of life.
I’ve had sex before. Lots of it. Not to brag, but being a professional hockey player comes with an added bonus of lines of women or even men who would love nothing more than to fuck you.
And not going to lie, I have taken advantage of it.
But this? Sex with Kaeli was an out-of-body experience, gravity-defying. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to live again if she doesn’t let me fuck her again. But damn, I’ll try my hardest to convince her. She can hate me while fucking me.
My thoughts vanish when the voice of her breath escaping her pouty, swollen lips reaches me. With my head propped on my hand, as I lie on my side, I see the same strand of hair blowing and then settling with every puff near her lips.
With a quiet chuckle, I tuck it behind her ear.
When exhaustion finally takes over my body, I nestle close to Kaeli and sleep spooning her naked figure. She might blow up tomorrow morning, but that’s an issue for later.
Right now, I just want to sleep snuggled against her soft body and breathe in her intoxicating lavender and honey scent.
* * *
My body experiences tremors.
No, wait, they’re not mine. My eyes shoot open when Kaeli’s whimpers reach my fogged brain.
I sit up to find her curled in on herself, her eyes squeezed shut, and skin slicked with sweat as tremors attack her body. Whimpers and something incoherent leaving her mouth.
Troubled and curious to find out what has her shaken up even in her sleep, I lean closer and try to understand what she says.
And when I finally make sense of her words, I want to punch a hole through the wall. “Please…no, please no…don’t. Please,” she cries again.
She’s having a nightmare, and seeing her in this state is quickly becoming one of mine.
Ever so slowly and gently, not wanting to surprise her, I haul her to my chest, her head pressed right against my thundering heart. I rub slow circles over the length of her back and try to calm her down and pull her from whichever hell she’s trapped in.
“Shhhh. It’s okay, Feather. You’re okay.” I keep repeating the motions and words until she finally finds her way out of it and into a peaceful slumber.
However, my peace is too far gone. The need to break things and find out the cause behind such a reaction eats at me. But the overpowering urge to make sure she’s okay and stay glued to her keeps me in place.
It’s astounding how much she keeps buried and hidden from the world. How much she endures alone, with no one by her side. I want to be that for her. I want to be the one to stay by her side and be the one she opens up to, shares her darkest secrets with.
I want to be hers.
And now that I’ve had a taste of her and experienced the caring, gentle, and kind side she masks from the cruel world, I will do anything to have her. Anything.
When it comes to Kaeli, all bets are off.
Making the resolve, I plant a soft kiss on her head and nuzzle my nose in her soft strands and doze off in her soothing embrace, pulling her close until there’s no space left between us.
* * *
My eyes blink open with the light streaming in from the window.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I yawn and pat the bed beside me, looking for Kaeli, only to find the spot vacant.
Worry, a feeling so foreign, takes root in me as I instantly sit upright on the bed, my eyes searching for her in her room. That’s when I hear water running from the bathroom, and I sigh in relief.
An idea forms, and I remove the blanket to get up and surprise her in the shower. Before I can enter, the vibration of a phone stops me. Wondering if it’s my phone, I pad over to the bedside table, evading our clothes strewn all across the floor.
The memory of sex with Kaeli brings a cheeky grin to my face.
But that drops the instant I see that it’s Kaeli’s phone and the face of the chump who’s calling her this early in the morning. Is she two-timing me or something?
The caller ID reads Roman, and he looks to be the same guy I saw with Kaeli a few times in Seattle, with his fucking blond hair and grin; he probably uses it to fool girls.
Not caring if she is, in fact fucking me on the side, I pick up the call when I still hear the shower running.
“Good morning, Kaeli baby!” Roman the chump, greets in a voice too suspicious to be cheery this early in the morning.
And baby?
Fucking baby?!
Who the fuck does he think he is, calling my woman baby? I’ll show him baby.
Without giving him a chance to ruin my mood further, I bark at him, “Listen, you chump, this is the first and the last time I’m hearing you call her baby. Don’t you dare call this number ever again. If you love your limbs exactly where they are, then lose this number and forget about Kaeli.”
I drop the call without listening to his reply. Proud of myself, my lips tilt in a smug and satisfied smirk.
Kaeli saunters into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, while I’m keeping her phone back. Finding me standing naked in her bedroom and her phone in my hand, her sharp eyes narrow at me. “What are you doing?”
I wave my hand and say, “Oh, this? Nothing. Just a wrong number.”
“Okay.” She chooses to believe me as she walks to her vanity mirror.
Not done with her yet, I grab her and pull her to my chest, my hands wrapping around her waist.
She gasps at the sudden action and tries to wiggle out of my hold. “Leave me, you dirty brute. I’m showered, and you stink.”
Arching an eyebrow at her claim, I remind her, “This is the same sweat you were licking like a drug yesterday.”
She flushes red and harrumphs, but doesn’t deny as she looks anywhere but at me.
Looking for my own dose of fix, I nuzzle her neck and take long pulls of her lavender and honey with hints of caramel smell. She feigns struggle, but a breathy moan betrays her.
A grin finds its way to my face when my eyes fall on the cactus in a pink bucket behind her by the window. She kept it. Ecstatic at the discovery, I pull back and look at her. “So, you kept the plant, huh?” I jerk my head in its direction.
Her head turns to look at it before she looks at me. “Of course, I did. I couldn’t throw it away after Stacy gifted it to me,” she shrugs.
My smile falls, and I look at her with my brows furrowed. “Stacy?”
“Yeah, when I got the job, I found it in front of my locker with a sweet note,” she recalls with a soft smile on her lips.
That’s when it clicks for me. Kaeli thinks Stacy is the one who gifted her this plant. Because, of course, she had no reason to think it was from me. And my dumb ass didn’t write my name on the note.
And of course, she kept it. She would’ve thrown it out the moment she found out it was from me.
My heart drops as a weight settles, which feels a lot like hurt and disappointment. But I quickly cover it and feign a smile when I feel her staring at me.
Picking her up and tossing her over my shoulder as she shrieks at me and hits my back with her fists, I strut into the bathroom.
“Put me down, you brute. What are you doing?” she yells at me at the top of her lungs while I only give her a wicked laugh as I smack her ass, eliciting yet another gasp from her sinful mouth.
“I’m not finished with you, Feather.”