Chapter Eight #2
For once, his guard falters. The sharp planes of his face soften, the darkness in his eyes recedes. ‘No. I would’ve verified the truth, first.’
‘And once you found out it was true?’ My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my teeth. ‘What then?’
A muscle twitches in his jaw. ‘I could repeat your words and say it’s all hypothetical now.
’ My unimpressed look cuts him, and his nostrils flare, his voice rough.
‘But the truth is, I don’t know. I’m told by fathers, mothers and from various other unsolicited confessions, that you can believe you’ll be one kind of parent or another.
Until it happens. Then it’s the steepest climb you’ll ever make.
For some. Others don’t even try to arm themselves for it. ’ Bitterness laces every syllable.
And it pierces me with enough memory of a conversation he abruptly ended, to ask, ‘Are we talking about your mother? Or your father?’
He stiffens.
For a moment I think he’ll stonewall me. Then a jagged breath explodes out of him. ‘We’re talking about us. But since this has turned into an exercise in worm-can opening…yes. My mother was my first unpalatable taste of betrayal.’
‘What does that mean?’
His mouth twists, bitter and cruel. ‘My father once said, in a near-drunk stupor, that if there were ever a picture beside Jezebel’s name in the Holy Book, it would be the exact image of my mother. I wanted to hate him for it.’
‘But you couldn’t?’
The single ripple in his jaw tells me the answer. He doesn’t speak, but his silence says enough.
Then the confessions come, clipped and harsh—how she’d slept with all his father’s friends, how the ugly whispers followed him through school, how the pity in teachers’, aunts’, uncles’ and even strangers’ eyes had burned worse than the mockery from his peers.
How she’d relished flaunting her scandals, dressing them up as defiance, laughing in the face of anyone who dared to suggest she was capable of being better.
That no mother or wife should subject her loved ones to such deplorable behaviour.
‘And the way she passed.’ His voice drops.
‘She was in her forties. Overdosed in a cheap motel. Some loser by her side, ten years younger, with his hands still inside her purse when the ambulance came.’ He swallows hard, throat working until he stills the movement.
‘My father…he crumbled after that. Withered away until there was nothing left but the shell of a man. He died not long afterwards. Never stepped out of the debauched shadows she left behind.’
I suck in a breath, raw sympathy flooding me before I can help it. ‘Theo…’
His gaze finds mine, a tempest swirling there.
‘Not all women are the same,’ I whisper.
His laugh is low, scathing. ‘And yet, time after time, I discover they are.’
Theo
Her face crumbles with a mix of disappointment and condemnation at my stark words, yet I can’t find the chagrin to feel bad about it, reeling as I am beneath the effects of throwing open doors to secrets I’ve kept locked tight since boyhood.
Words I swore would never leave my mouth have spilled into the room like a contagion and now they won’t be put back.
The stench of my mother’s sins lingers, filling every corner.
My chest burns with the weight of it; shame, fury, the corrosive humiliation of a child who learned too young that the person meant to teach him loyalty and love could only offer betrayal. That shame had hardened me, turned me into someone no one could wound.
Until tonight. Until Tessa.
And then there’s the baby.
The one I never met.
The one she lost without me even knowing.
The thought claws at me, burrows under my skin.
Would I have felt what Ashon feels now—this full, reckless embrace of fatherhood that radiates from him like sunlight?
Would it have filled the hollow places I’ve carried inside me since my father’s last broken breath? I guess I’ll never know.
Or will I? The smallest seed of something stirs at the back of my mind, something I don’t yet dare examine. Not here. Not now.
Tessa’s hand curls around the door handle again, snapping me back into the present. She thinks she can walk away from this. From me.
‘Care to tell me where you’re going?’ My voice is steel, a command more than a question.
Her head snaps around, eyes flashing. ‘Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t know.’
Yeah, not good enough. I’m too raw from the results of letting her out of my sight that last time.
In two strides I’ve crossed the room and, before she can protest, I’ve hauled her over my shoulder like she’s everything I want to carry.
She squeals, hammers her fists against my back, but all I feel is the thrum of her body against mine. The solid certainty of her, even in an ocean of turbulence.
My blood roars hotter for it.
‘We have another month,’ I growl, marching us into the bedroom.
‘I’m exercising my right to commandeer every second.
’ I drop her onto the edge of the mattress, caging her there with my body, my hands planted on either side of her head.
Her eyes are wide, pupils blown with the same awareness that’s shredding me from the inside out.
I dip lower, my lips brushing her ear, letting my breath ghost across her skin.
‘Now, do you want a quid pro quo of your earlier appetiser gift…’ my voice thickens as I drag my gaze over her flushed face, down to the frantic rise and fall of her chest ‘…or would you prefer to get right to the main feast?’
Her eyes flick down, betraying her, betraying us both, straight to my crotch and the hard erection eager to be let out to play with the most infuriating, head-wrecking, beautiful woman I’ve ever known.
I press that part of my anatomy deeper into her belly and, at her helpless moan, I let the smug smile curl slow and sure across my mouth. ‘Feast it is.’
I’m not ashamed to admit that the last hour has deeply unsettled me. Enough for me to want to test her.
I watch in silence as she undresses me, slow at first but then with frantic gestures that speak to the urgency we both feel.
And when I reach for the bedside table, pull the drawer open, I do it with my eyes on her face.
Gauging her reaction closely enough to see the spasm of emotion that contorts her features.
Emotions that tell me how much Tessa Rockson wants a baby.
How in hindsight, every act—whether she’s eating, or drinking, or stroking her lover’s cock—has been with that dream at the back of her mind.
When I pluck out one condom and hand it pointedly to her, it’s with that keen observation in mind. Not to mention, it’s very much a test too.
Because these roiling feelings inside me? I despise them enough not to want to bear them alone. And yes, I’m also aware it should shame me a little.
So when the first wave of pleasure sweeps over me at the grip and stroke of her clever hands, I willingly let that particular thought drift away.
What I don’t let it drift too far, though? The daring little seedling that continues to grow at the back of my mind. The one that will no doubt damn me for all eternity. But only if I don’t handle it right.