Chapter 30 Duke
It had been some time since everything with Solana's old manager. I knew something was off about that man from the beginning. I just hated that she had to find out the way she did.
In the aftermath of it all, I had convinced Solana to start therapy. She turned right around and suggested I do the same. And honestly, she wasn't wrong. I needed it too.
I was still working through everything with my parents.
It wasn't an overnight fix, and I never expected it to be.
There were layers to what their absence had left behind that I was only just beginning to sort through.
But the few sessions I had gone to had already shifted something in me, and I could feel the difference.
I had even started talking to Colby a little more. I still didn't call him dad. I wasn't there yet and might never be. But I had enough in me now to acknowledge that he was part of how I got here, and that was worth something.
Heiress was getting herself together too.
She had found a place of her own. At least, that was how she told it.
I had paid a good portion of the rent quietly, working it out with the owner so the number stayed in her range.
I didn't need her to know all of that. I just needed her to have a foundation.
My grandparents and I had been keeping our distance since the last time I came by and said what needed to be said. But Solana was finally ready to meet them, so we decided to host a barbecue at my house. I didn't throw events here often, but I was turning over a new leaf.
Solana wanted to invite Jessa, Miss Lottie, and Aubree. I invited my grandparents, Colby and Heiress, Juelz, Money, Rico, and Benny. Benny sent his apologies since Willow wasn't feeling well.
We also extended an invite to Vinny and his mother Marissa.
Over the past couple of months we had helped her get back on her feet.
She was working at the bar now, and Vinny had taken to coming by the shop after school to help Solana out.
Juelz offered to pick them up since he had gone ahead and bought himself a car while his shoulder was still healing and his bike was off limits.
I stood in my closet trying to figure out what to put on, still damp from the shower with my towel around my waist. Then I smelled her.
Her scent reached me before she did. Solana wrapped her arms around me from behind and pressed a kiss against my back. I glanced over my shoulder and down at her.
"How are you feeling, Sweets?"
Same question I had asked her every single day since that night.
"I'm fine, sir."
I raised a brow and smirked.
"You need me to do something about that, Ms. Wright?" I reached behind me and gripped her ass.
She yelped and tried to step back out of reach.
"Duke, your grandparents are downstairs."
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her back into my chest, pressing kisses down the length of her neck.
"They know what this is, love."
She reached up and nudged my chin. "Uh-uh. You are not going to have them looking at me like I'm a harlot."
I bent forward laughing, gripping my knees.
"Sweets, what year were you born? People these days say all kinds of things, but harlot, baby?"
She shoved my shoulder with a smirk and a roll of her eyes, then turned to leave the closet. I caught her before she made it out, lifted her, and set her on the counter in the middle of the room.
I stepped between her thighs and gripped her chin, kissing her slow and deep. This woman was a pure addiction and I had no interest in recovering.
She lifted her hips to help me pull her leggings down without being asked.
"Duke," she breathed.
I slipped my fingers between her lips into her warmth. Her walls pulled me in like a promise. Her soft sounds against my ear made it very difficult to exercise any kind of patience.
My towel was doing very little to hide what was happening beneath it. I let it go and bit my lower lip.
"Should have stayed downstairs. Now you're going to have to keep that volume in check if you don't want everyone knowing exactly how you like it."
I placed both her legs over my shoulders, gripped her hips, and pulled her to the edge of the counter. Then I slid into her in one deep stroke, catching her cry with my mouth before it could carry through the house. I took my time, alternating between deep and slow before picking up my pace.
When her walls locked around me and she spilled over, I worked her through every second of it. Then I pressed kisses up the length of the leg draped over my shoulder.
"Sir, please."
She knew exactly what that did to me. I closed my eyes and steadied myself. When I opened them, she was already smirking.
She gripped the edge of the counter and moved with me, tightening around me deliberately every few strokes. She knew what she was doing and she did not care. We had company so I was going to give her what she wanted, but only after she gave me one more.
I wrapped one hand gently around her throat and used the other to press lightly against her chest, easing her back down against the counter.
"One more," I said, sliding into her in long, smooth strokes. "You got one more for me?"
She nodded, her top pulled down, bottom lip caught between her teeth to hold back the sounds she couldn't quite contain.
I gave her what she was asking for, deeper with every stroke, until her legs went loose and the sounds she had been trying to hold back were too far gone to stop. I was fairly certain the whole house had heard her at that point. I couldn't bring myself to care even a little. She was mine.
I cleaned up and then carried her to the bathroom so we could shower together.
She looked up at me afterward with a flat expression and rolled her eyes.
"You know you're going downstairs by yourself now, right? I need a nap. You do not know a single thing about a quickie."
I laughed and wrung out the washcloth to start washing her down first.
"Nothing about how I treat your body is ever going to be quick, Sweets. You deserve patience. You deserve the whole thing every time. You'd agree with that, wouldn't you?"
She looked away with a smile she was trying to hide.
"You just like getting your way. That's all this is." A pause. "But I'll take it, because I am a classy woman and I deserve nothing less."
I threw my head back laughing. Life with this woman had tested me in every direction, but never because of her.
There was a purity to her that the world had always wanted to get its hands on.
And as long as I had a single breath left in my body, they were going to have to come through me every time.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER…
I helped Solana into her outfit for the day, then left her in the room to take the nap she needed. I told her I would wake her when people started arriving.
I lied. I was going to let her sleep as long as her body asked for.
I stood at the foot of the bed for a moment and just looked at her.
It had taken time and therapy for the nightmares to ease up.
Watching her settle into sleep without flinching, without jolting awake, was something I was still getting used to in the best way.
I turned and eased the door shut behind me.
I had been greedy with her earlier, so I owed her the cooking prep on my own.
The moment I made it downstairs, my grandma was already in the kitchen working through the sides Solana had laid out on the counter.
My grandad sat at the island with his newspaper and a cup of coffee, settled into his morning routine the way he always had.
They had asked to come early since they hadn't met Solana yet and my grandma had wanted to cook alongside her. Now it looked like she would be doing it solo, which she didn't seem to mind. I knew Solana was going to have something to say to me about it later.
I went around and hugged my grandma, keeping the kiss on the cheek to myself this time. I had brushed, flossed, and used mouthwash, but I still wasn't going to do that to her. Some things were just about respect.
"Keep it up and I'll be bouncing a great-grandchild on my knee before the year is out," my grandad said without looking up from his paper.
I smirked and shrugged. My grandma snapped me with the dish towel.
"She should have stayed down here with us. Not my fault she's addicting," I said.
My grandma shook her head. "I hope you plan to marry that woman since you're around here carrying on like this."
I washed my hands at the sink and looked back at her over my shoulder.
"You don't even have to wonder about that. It's only ever going to be her."
She softened at that, then pointed her dish towel at me. "Good. Now come help me get this food going. You got that sweet girl all turned around because of you."
I grabbed the ribs I had been soaking in vinegar and headed outside to the grill. If only she knew there wasn't much sweet about what had just happened upstairs, but some things were mine to keep.
My grandad followed me out and settled into the chair beside the grill. He pulled two cigars from the case he was carrying and held one out to me. We clipped and lit them while I got the grill started, and I let the silence sit between us the way it always had when he had something on his mind.
He let a few minutes pass before he cleared his throat.
"It's been a while since we talked. I wanted you to know how proud I am of the man I'm looking at right now.
We heard you that day, son. Loud and clear.
I didn't love the way it came out, but it was the truth and we both knew it.
We hadn't been helping your mother. We'd been protecting ourselves from the guilt of watching her fall. "
He paused. I closed the grill lid and walked over to take the seat across from him.
"I could have said it better. That's on me.
But I was tired of watching the same cycle play out and knowing she'd end up back in my lap the moment things got hard again.
She wasn't my child, but she was my child, if that makes any sense.
And I hadn't dealt with that contradiction the way I should have. "
My grandad nodded slowly. "We see that now. Heiress wasn't getting better, and we had to stop pretending that holding on was the same as helping. I'm glad you and she are finding your way to each other. And I'm glad to see you opening the door to Colby too."
"He was waiting on me to be ready. He just needed someone to tell him it was okay to push a little. I think having me so young kept both of them stuck in that same place for a long time. But I told them both the same thing. Show me you're trying and I'll do the same."
"That's all any of us can do," he said.
I nodded and stood with my cigar, heading back to the grill.
We stayed out there until the first cars started arriving. Colby and Heiress pulled up together. By the time I made it back inside, Solana was already awake and standing in the kitchen with Heiress and my grandma, trading her baking secrets like she had known them for years.
She had changed her outfit too. A sundress covered in small pink flowers, stopping just above the knee.
I reached for the hem as she walked by and my grandma caught me with the dish towel before my hand made contact.
Heiress stood there and watched it happen without lifting a single finger to help me. I made a note of that.
I managed to escape when the doorbell rang.
I looked through the peephole. Juelz was standing on the porch showing off that diamond grill like he was doing me a favor by showing up.
I cracked the door just enough to see around him.
"Y'all can come on in," I said, gesturing to everyone else on the porch. "He stays out front."
Jessa, Aubree, Vinny, and Marissa all cracked up.
"Excuse us," Marissa said, stepping around Juelz with Vinny right behind her.
I pulled the door open and let them through while Juelz talked the entire time.
"Yeah, move along," Jessa said, bumping past him.
"Keep it up and I'm calling Apollo over here so he can have you tongue-tied again," Juelz fired back.
Jessa rolled her eyes and bumped his good shoulder on her way through. Aubree walked in behind her without so much as looking in his direction. Whatever he had done this time was apparently significant.
Juelz stepped inside last and immediately grabbed his shoulder like it had flared up on cue.
"I don't know how y'all treat me like this. After everything this shoulder has been through for y'all."
Solana walked by at exactly that moment and looked up at him with genuine concern.
"Is your shoulder actually still bothering you?"
He stepped right past me to answer her and I let him have it. I turned back to the door just as Money and Rico were jogging up the steps. I dapped them both and locked up behind them.
I stood in the middle of the hallway for a moment before moving further in.
I looked around at all of it. The family I had been born into and the family I had built filling up every corner of my house.
Laughter coming out of the kitchen. The smell of food.
The sound of Vinny and Jessa's voices carrying from the living room.
My grandad back outside with his cigar and a fresh audience.
I never pictured this being my life. Not this version of it. Not something this full and this real and this mine.
And I knew exactly whose fault that was.
Like she felt it, Solana looked up from across the room and found me. She smiled that smile, the one she had stopped hiding, then made her way over and wrapped her arms around my waist.
"You alright?" she asked.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead, holding my lips there for just a second longer than I needed to.
"I'm more than alright, love."
And for the first time in my life, I meant every word of it.