Chapter 14 Aiden
AIDEN
Every wall I’ve built for six years collapses at once.
I don’t have time to think about consequences or fear or the part of my brain that spent years convincing itself that restraint was the same thing as safety. All I know is that she’s standing in front of me under the stars, wrapped in a blanket, eyes glassy like she’s gone wet everywhere.
We come together hard enough that the railing rattles.
Her mouth finds mine, and I kiss her back with everything I’ve held in since that morning at the cabin.
The taste of her silken tongue in my mouth makes six years of restraint disintegrate into urgency.
My hands are everywhere I can touch her without letting go, as if I loosen my grip even for a second, she might disappear again.
But this is hunger sharpened by regret, and I will not let her regret another moment with me. Even still, I can hardly make the words come out. “Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”
Her voice is dark. “Don’t you dare.”
That’s all I need to hear. I feast on her mouth as we clumsy make it inside.
The balcony door shuts behind us, the city falling away as if it never existed.
I don’t remember crossing the living room or making it down the hall.
I remember her hands fisting in my shirt, the way she gasps when I press my forehead to hers like I need to anchor myself to something solid before I lose my fucking mind.
We collide with the bedroom door. I fumble with the handle, frustrated and shaking, and she laughs breathlessly against my jaw like she’s just as undone as I am. The moment it’s closed behind us, everything becomes sensation instead of sequence.
Bit it isn’t only physical. It can’t be.
Every touch carries a memory. Each kiss is an apology for time lost between us.
The air in our lungs is loaded with things we never said.
Between kisses, words spill out because holding them back has cost us too much already.
“I’ve thought about you every day for six years. ”
She doesn’t look surprised. She just cups my face like she’s always known. “So, have I. You ruined me for anyone else.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say as I kiss my way up her throat. I don’t remember laying her on the bed—I only remember a sense of rightness when the world went sideways. “I’m sorry for that morning. For all of it.”
She pulls me closer, forehead pressed to mine. “Show me you’re not running this time.”
“Never again.”
Her hands slide up my arms, fingertips curving around my muscles like she’s memorizing me.
Or remembering me. There’s nothing tentative in her touch, nothing cautious.
It’s like she’s reclaiming something that always belonged to her, and the realization hits me hard enough that I have to close my eyes to remember how to breathe.
My bed becomes the center of the universe.
There is nothing else but her. Those cocoa waves, fanned out on my pillow.
Her dark brown eyes, searching my face, as if she’s looking for the lie she’s been trained to expect.
When she doesn’t find it, something in her expression softens, relief and longing tangling together.
She kisses me like she knows I’m not going anywhere without her ever again.
The layers between us peel away, leaving only skin in every direction.
When she left me on the balcony the first time, I was hard.
I knew she wanted more, and I always have, so she left me with an ache that’s always around when she is.
I fought that erection, letting the cool air slow me down when she had left.
The moment I heard the balcony door open again, my balls throbbed. Now, I’m harder than I’ve ever been, dying to feel her on me. I pulse against her soft, warm thigh.
But I want more than that, too. I want her. Need to drink her in.
The years have made Harper’s body a little softer, but her eyes are harder. Her breasts are fuller now, more inviting. Same with her belly and thighs. She is a feast made flesh, and I intend to enjoy every inch of her.
I kiss her one more dizzying time. “I promise I’m not running away.”
“What—oh!”
I lick my way down her body, sampling everything on display.
Those nipples, the sweet skin around them.
She writhes beneath me when I circle her navel with my tongue, her fingers diving into my hair.
As I part her thighs, her breath catches.
I pet her gently before spreading her apart and admiring how she glistens for me.
And then, I savor her. The taste of her…
the feel is something beyond wet silk. I push into her, nip her there.
My fingers slide into her to find that rough patch inside, and her breaths go choppy.
I suck and nibble and lap until she’s shaking for me.
I love making her thighs jiggle like this.
Love watching her come apart. I crave the taste of her orgasm. Just a little more—
Her keening wail slashes through me as she shatters. Those soft thighs close in around my skull, and her body rocks against my face and hand. Every inch of skin is wet, hers, mine, both. Every muscle pulsing alive.
She brings me to life. She has since we met. It’s her hands and her warmth and the way she makes everything else fall away. It’s the feeling of being seen and chosen without reservation.
Her fingers dig into my hair as she pulls me up without loosening those thighs.
I let her lead me upward and crawl over her body, urgent to meet those lips again.
But this time, she spreads her legs for me and belts them around my waist. Her wetness slicks against the underside of my cock until she angles herself to take me.
She cups my cheek and stares into my eyes as I slide into her.
We both gasp, both cry out, both shudder from the sheer joy of it.
Locked together, there are no more words. No more fears. This is everything.
We move together, slow at first until we build speed. She was made for me, and I for her. No one has ever felt this right, this perfect for me. There could never be anyone but Harper.
I thumb her clit between us. Need to feel her come on me. Need to feel it from the inside. Need to make her come.
Her back arches as she shudders beneath me and the sounds that pour from her full lips are the purest, filthiest music. The song I have had stuck in my head for six years.
I lick up her sternum, her throat, her mouth.
I devour that song, breathe her breath. When I wrap my arms around her and roll us over, she blinks back to reality with the most enchanted look on her face.
Until she leans down, her hair around us like a chocolate curtain, and kisses me hard enough to make me dizzy.
I grip her ass and grind her against me as I pump upward, knowing I’m stroking her G-spot with my cock every thrust. She shakes in my arms as I drink her chirps and sighs. Heat gathers in my balls, my spine. Can’t breathe. Don’t need to.
She throbs around me, and then, she ignites. I hold her tight as she goes wild in my arms, coming, rocking, twitching, gasping, and just as I try to roll us over, it’s too late. I’m over the edge, gushing inside of her, too far gone to stop.
Our heavy breaths move her hair. Sweat slicks us both. The moment I can speak again, truths slip out because there’s no reason to guard them anymore. “I love you.”
Her smile is everything. “I never stopped loving you.”
The words hit me straight in the chest. “I didn’t think I deserved it.”
She pulls back enough to look at me, eyes bright and unguarded. “That’s for me to decide.”
I can’t argue that.
After we both clean up, we end up tangled together, sheets half-displaced, her head resting against my shoulder. I trace the line of her cheek with my thumb, committing the shape of her face to memory. “I love you,” I say again. “I’ve loved you since that first night. I was too broken to admit it.”
Her breath catches, and when she answers, her voice shakes. “Not broken. It was too soon back then—we both knew it. Saying I love you after one night is crazy—”
“But that’s how I felt.”
She smiles. “Same here. Even if it’s crazy.
But I think… if we had said it to each other back then, we would have thought we were nuts.
Every person we know would have thought so, too, so if we hadn’t sabotaged things, they might have.
” Harper sighs, tracing the lines of my pecs.
“I hate that we didn’t have the past six years together, Aiden.
But I can’t regret everything it took to have Mason. ”
The honesty of it sets me reeling. “Fuck. I can’t regret that, either. Hadn’t thought about it that way. This whole time I’ve been beating myself up over hurting you… but the best thing came out of it. There’s a word for that—”
“Cognitive dissonance?” she asks as she squints, thinking hard.
I shrug. “You’re the one who went to real college, so I’ll take your word for it. Whatever it’s called, I hate that I hurt you. But I am beyond grateful to the universe that he’s here.”
She slowly nods. “Same. He’s everything to me.” Harper lies against me, her head tucked under my chin, and I can feel the steady rhythm of her breathing. “Tell me about your father. I’m curious.”
The urge to shut down lifts its ugly head, but this is Harper. She’s not going to use it against me, she’s asking only out of true curiosity. “What else do you want to know?”
“What was he like? Besides a gigantic asshole, I mean.”
I chuckle lightly. “Not a lot to tell outside of that. He read classic sci-fi, insisted I do the same. Whatever he did, he wanted me to join him. Whether it was reading copious amounts of Heinlein or working on his truck. Didn’t matter if I wanted to do any of it.”
“Sounds like a piece of work.”
“You’re not wrong… I remember the sound of door closing behind him for the last time and the way my mother stood frozen in the kitchen as if she didn’t move, it might not be real.
The sound of his voice, wheedling me into things I didn’t want to do, didn’t want to believe.
The way every failure made me believe he was right about me. Those things stick with a kid…”
I ramble on, and Harper listens without interrupting, her hand warm and steady against my ribs. When I finish, she presses her lips there, not as a distraction, but as acknowledgment. “I’m sorry you went through all of that.”
“I’m sorry about your divorce. Do you want to talk about it?”
She takes a breath and lies back, so I turn onto my side to watch her story unfold.
“There was a quiet erosion beforehand, but it’s hard to erode a foundation that wasn’t well-built in the first place.
Like tearing apart sand instead of cement.
I had ignored my own feelings for years, but eventually, they bite you in the ass because they were neglected.
When I told myself my marriage was over, I thought about staying because of Mason.
And I tried. But that was a lie, too, and I couldn’t keep lying to myself or Mason, or even David.
As much as he’s an asshole now, he didn’t deserve a wife who loved someone else. ”
I press a kiss to her forehead. “You’re too kind to that bastard.”
She shakes her head. “I lied to him. Every day of our marriage. Except the few nights I was ever drunk around him…” Her guilt-laden sigh fills the room. “I told him about you. About the cabin. The way I fell in a single night. The way you broke my heart.”
I kiss the back of her hand. “I’ll never stop being sorry for that.”
“No need. I get it now. Point is, I should have never dumped all of that on him, drunk or not, because now, he’s even more hurt. I don’t hold that against him. I was in the wrong.”
“Are you applying for sainthood or something?”
She snorts a laugh. “It’s true, though!”
I shake my head, smiling. “Well, at least he gave you Mason.”
Her smile becomes beatific. “He did. And honestly, Mason is a part of the reason I left David, strange as it is to say that. I don’t ever want him to think a marriage is something you tolerate.
Or that staying quiet is the same thing as being strong or smart.
A marriage should be about love or whatever the people in it want it to be about.
But it should never be one-sided. That’s cruel. ”
“I see your meaning.” I stroke her arm, the valley between her breasts. “Maybe David isn’t entirely the bad guy in this.”
“He’s not.” She pauses. “Well, he could be nicer, but what I mean is, I get why he’s bitter and angry. I would be, too, if I were in his loafers.” She talks on about kindness and acceptance, and hours pass without us noticing.
At some point, the city outside begins to change, the dark softened by the earliest hints of morning.
Pale light creeps along the edges of the curtains, and I realize we’ve talked through the entire night without either of us wanting it to end.
Dawn breaks while we’re still wrapped around each other.
Harper shifts slightly, her voice raw. “I’m terrified this will end the same way,” she admits. “That you’ll wake up and panic and call us a mistake.”
I pull her closer instinctively, pressing my lips to her hair. “Can’t wake up if we never go to sleep.” I tilt her face up toward mine, sealing that promise with a kiss and the promise of many more.