Chapter 19
Layla
Zayd was gone when I woke up this morning. My heart twists when I think about never seeing him again. An unexpectedly familiar feeling, similar to when Sutton left. Like with Sutton, I wish he’d said goodbye. At least Zayd told me he was leaving. And at least, Zayd promised to come back.
My face warms when I let my mind relive those moments before dinner. I can still feel the heat of his thigh in my hand. Guilt swirls in my gut knowing that if he hadn’t stopped me, if he had let my hand drift all the way up his leg… My need was—still is—a thirst I can’t quench.
But he did stop me, and even though he said he wouldn’t leave me alone, here I am, alone and still in desperate need of a relief no one can give me.
The microwave timer chimes, letting me know my food is warm. Leftovers from our dinner the night before.
As I drop the hot plate on the countertop to avoid burning my fingertips, the door slides open behind me.
“Hey.” I run cold water over my stinging fingers.
I take the dish towel off the hook to dry my hands as I turn around.
“Sorry, I didn’t make you anything. I didn’t think you were coming…
back.” My voice trails off, and the towel falls from my hands when I look up, expecting to find Zayd, but it’s Sutton standing there instead.
My first instinct is to run over, throw my arms around him, and kiss him senseless. I stay put, the second I remember why he, my husband, hasn’t been here to hold and kiss like he promised he always would.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, coolly. My lips purse as I fight back tears.
“Not the welcome I was hoping for but the one I deserve, I suppose.” Sutton walks over and picks the towel up off the floor in front of me.
“You suppose right. And you still haven’t answered my question.” I snatch the towel from him when he stands.
“Zayd didn’t tell you I was coming?” He sighs and answers himself, under his breath, “Of course not. In case I said no.” Addressing me again, he explains, “Zayd asked me to come back. To be here when his mark wears off.”
“Oh.”
“What?” Sutton asks, picking up on the annoyance in my tone.
“Fucking hell.” I throw the towel on the counter and walk around the dining room table, putting it between us. “I had hoped, when you came back, it would be because you wanted to, not because someone made you.”
“I do want to be here, Layla,” he pleads, following my path around the table. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be here.”
I hold my position, raising my stiffened chin.
“So, you’d have come back today if Zayd hadn’t shown up on your doorstep?
” Sutton blanches and rubs the back of his neck, giving me my answer.
“You’re not here by choice, Sutton. Only obligation.
So, don’t patronize me with lies about wanting to be here. ”
When he takes a step closer, I step back, not letting him take my hand when he reaches for it. Letting his hand fall at his side with a defeated breath, he says, “I have thought about coming back. But after what I did? The way I left? I didn’t think you’d want me.”
I scoff and throw up my hands. “For fuck’s sake, Sutton. That’s all I wanted.”
“But not anymore?” He dares another step forward.
I don’t back away this time.
“No—Yes. I don’t know.”
When the rough tips of his fingers graze the back of my hand, I pull away again, reminded of all the nights I cried myself to sleep, desperate for the touch he denied me.
“Crying out loud, Sutton. I spent the last month trying to come to terms with you leaving and the possibility that I’d never see you again, and now you’re here, and I…
I just… I don’t know. I—I don’t fucking know. ”
Sutton stuffs his hands in his jeans’ pockets and shrugs. “His scent is strong enough to carry you for a while. You want me to leave and come back when you need me?”
Unable to hold back, I lunge forward and shove my hands on his chest. He absorbs blow after blow as I scream at him, “I want you to have never left! I don’t want to have to make this decision because I want you to have never put me in the position to make it!”
Sutton grips my wrists, holding me as I sob, and he tries to explain. “I’m sorry, Layla. But I had to leave. I wish it wasn’t true, but I had to. It just hurt too much.”
Hot anger turns into cold, unyielding ice when I look him dead in the eye and throw his excuse back at him. “And it hurts Zayd to be with me but not claim me, but he suffers through it. Night after night.”
The pain in Sutton’s eyes cuts my heart clean through.
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” I say, wishing I could take it back. “That was a low blow. Hurting you because you hurt me isn’t okay. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I expect him to fight back or leave again. But he just takes a deep breath and says, “But you aren’t wrong. I’m your husband. You only did what you had to do—what I told you to do. You both did. I chose to leave. The consequences of that choice are mine and mine alone.”
My knees wobble, threatening to give out completely.
With him still holding my hands against his chest, I look up at him with tears in my eyes again.
“I just wish you had given us more time. What we went through was painful, but we should have suffered that pain together. That’s what we promised to do when we got married.
You broke your promise to me, Sutton. You broke my heart and left me to heal it all on my own. ”
“That’s why I wrote the letter telling you to bond with Zayd. So you wouldn’t have to be alone.”
“But I didn’t love him. I didn’t even know him. You left me with a stranger. You’re just lucky he cared enough to keep his promise not to claim me. That he was strong enough not to give in to his base instincts.”
“I know it hasn’t been easy for him…”
“Not just for him,” I admit, because he needs to know just how close he came to losing me.
Sutton’s eyes narrow and darken. “What do you mean?” His grip tightens on my wrists, then loosens again. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Knowing is what hurt so bad last time.”
I flatten my hands on his chest. The familiar slope of firm muscle under his plain black tee quickens my breathing and the unquenchable need deep in my core. “We haven’t had sex if that’s what you’re worried about.”
But Sutton and I should, I think, sliding my hands down his chiseled stomach. Shockingly more defined than before he left.
His body has changed so much. Way more than regular chores or even exercise could change him.
Sutton sniffs the air. “Don’t lie to me, Layla. I can smell him on you. Mixed with… Your scent.” He looks between us. At our centers, so close to touching.
“I swear, Sutton. Zayd and I have not had sex. It’s just from how he marked me.” I bite the inside of my lip to stop myself from admitting how desperate I’ve been for more than just his mark.
Sutton grips the nape of my neck with one hand and presses the other on the small of my back, slamming our bodies together. “And how did he do that?”
“Are you… Are you sure you want to know?” From the hard length of his cock branding my stomach, I know his answer already.
“I need to know,” he says, leaning in to drag his nose up the pulse of my neck, inhaling deeply. “I’ve missed you so fucking much, Layla baby.”
I want to be mad at him, but it’s been hell not having sex.
I’ve never been so horny as I have in the last month.
And I still love Sutton. I want nothing more than to repair our relationship, but at the same time, I want to punish him for leaving me.
Even though I know it will do nothing to help us heal.
My breath shudders when he drags his tongue along the same path his nose drew on my neck.
With his lips next to my ear, he whispers, “I know you’re still upset with me,” then he growls, “but I really want to fuck my wife.” He grinds his hips and his rock-hard length on my stomach, making my thighs clench against the flow of my slick.
“What are you waiting for?” I taunt.
Another guttural growl, and Sutton grips the front of my shirt, pulls, and sends buttons flying across the room, freeing my bare breasts. Arching my back over his thick, muscular arm, he leans over me and sucks my breast into his mouth, and laps his tongue around the hardened peak.
He doesn’t stay there long, trailing his tongue down the pillowy mound to lick his flattened tongue through my cleavage.
I didn’t think much of it when he licked my neck, but the way he’s focusing on my sternum and the insides of my breasts, licking and kissing, not leaving a single inch untouched, I wonder if it’s because these are the places Zayd’s mark is the strongest. I wonder if he’s going so hard on these areas because he wants to erase Zayd’s scent and replace it with his own.
Whatever his reason, it is an incredibly erotic act, and I can’t get enough of it.
Sutton drops to his knees, kissing a line down the center of my stomach as he goes. When his face is level with my hips, he buries his nose in the V between my legs, pressing the seam of my pajama pants against my slick sex.
“He marked you here,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“Yes.” I can’t deny it. I don’t want to.
Sutton hooks his fingers in the waist of my pants and pulls them down. Tickling my mound with the tip of his nose, he breathes in my bare sex.
“How?” He asks.
“Hmm?” I ask, struggling to process a conversation. Too desperate for him to get on with it. Desperate for him to bend me over the table or throw me down on the bed and fuck me senseless.
“How did he mark you here?” He licks up my slit, making me whimper.
I swallow hard and brace my hands on his shoulders. “While we sleep. We’re naked. His body rubs on mine.”
He teases my mound with the tip of his nose and light kisses. “What parts of his body?”
“Sutton…” He’s taking this too lightly. He’s going to regret it later.
Sutton’s hands grip my hips. His fingers dig into my flesh. “What part of his body rubs your pussy, Layla?” He teasingly licks and kisses my hips and thighs.
I’m asleep when Zayd marks me, but I know what happens. But I can’t tell Sutton that. Knowing what Zayd and I did while he recovered is why he left. I don’t want to drive him away again by telling him what he will regret hearing later.
“Say it, Layla.” Sutton bites the thick flesh of my hip.
I gasp, and my pussy flutters. I’m not going to last much longer. “I can’t.”
“I already know.” His voice is commanding as he loses his patience.
But I still challenge him. “Then why do I need to say it?”
His steely gaze sends shivers up my spine.
“So you will know,” he says in a voice that is not his own.
So deep and primal. As transformed as his physique.
He is so unlike the Sutton I remember that I might have let fear pull me away from him.
Until he says, “I’m well aware of what’s been here when I lick you.
” And his tongue splits my slit and laps me clean through.
“Oh, shit,” I hiss as what he said finally makes sense, and I say what he wants to hear. “His cock marks me there.” And he’s licking it. Tasting my pussy and Zayd’s…
“Does it make you wet when Zayd’s cock rubs your pussy?” He licks me through again.
“Yes.” I pant.
Sutton hooks one of my legs over his shoulder, opening me up, letting him lick me more deeply.
I tangle my fingers in his night black hair to hold myself steady as he works his tongue and lips around my clit.
“You taste incredible.”
I smile down at him, meeting his eyes as he feasts on me.
“And he tastes good on you.” He smiles up at me, winking at my wide-eyed stare.
Keeping his eyes locked with mine, he covers my mound with his mouth, works the hell out of my clit until I come on his face.
Before I can catch my breath, Sutton stands, turns me around, and bends me over the dining table.
After kicking my legs wide, Sutton only prods my entrance with the tip of his cock, making me whine and plead, “Please, Sutton.”
“What’s wrong, Layla baby?” There’s a wicked taunt in his tone.
“Sutton, please.”
“What do you want, baby?” He slides his length through my slit, sending a shock through my center when his tip hits my clit, still tingling from my orgasm.
“Cock.” The word blurts from some unashamed monster I didn’t know I had in me.
“Whose cock do you want?” Sutton asks, teasing my entrance with his tip again.
“Yours.” I push my hips back, trying to draw him in, but he resists.
“Just mine?” Sutton finally dips his tip inside my pussy, but when he does, he also presses the pad of his thumb to the sensitive ring of my rear entrance, making me clamp down on his cock. “You want his cock too, don’t you, Layla baby? You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit when he finally thrusts deep inside of me.
As he fucks me over the table, I completely forget that knowing Zayd and I had sex was the reason Sutton left.
I forget to worry that he might leave again.
I forget consequences exist and give myself completely over to the moment.
I focus only on the sweet slip of Sutton’s length in and out of my pussy, dripping with slick.
The bump of his hips against my ass. Forgetting the future to live completely in the present I wish will never end.
“I’m gonna make you come again, Layla,” Sutton says, in that voice that is and isn’t his, as he reaches around to finger my clit. “When you do, I want you to say his name. I want you to tell him how good his cock feels inside of you.”
My brain says it’s wrong, but my body, feeling the slick running down my leg, knows it’s right.
Sutton rubs his slick-soaked fingers around my clit and pumps his cock in my hungry cunt.
“I’m close,” I warn him.
“Come for me, Layla. Come for your alpha.”
Fuck. “Yes. I’m coming.”
“Who are you coming for?”
I can’t ignore the command and call out, “Zayd. I’m coming for you. Fuck, your cock feels good. I’ve wanted it so bad. Oh, Zayd, you feel so fucking good.”
Sutton’s rhythm becomes erratic as he grips my hips and comes with the pulse of my channel locked around his cock.
When he finishes, he slowly rubs his hand up and down my spine in a soothing sort of way.
“I love you, Layla baby,” he says, pulling out his softening length and lifting me into his arms to hold me against him and kissing the crook of my neck.
“You’re not mad?”
“No.”
“How? What’s changed?” I ask, wishing he had been able to find this part of himself sooner, before he left.
Sutton touches his forehead to mine and simply says, “Everything.”