Chapter 23 Too Far
Too Far
One look at Kian and I huffed out a small laugh. “Rough day?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “You could say that.”
We stood in his open doorway as day slipped into night, and he wasn’t moving back.
I cocked my head to the side. “Are you going to let me in?”
Offering me a tired smile, he apologized. “I’m not going to be the best company tonight. Do you want to call it a night?”
“Not really, no,” I murmured. It had been days since I’d woken in Kian’s arms, and he’d been working nonstop since. “I’ll take your bad days along with your good days so long as you want to share your days with me.”
Moving back, he murmured, “Today is definitely one of the bad ones.”
I stepped inside. “Thank you.”
He snorted. “Don’t thank me yet,” he instructed on his way to the couch where he flopped down. “I just got Isaiah to bed. If he gets up again, you’ll be sorry.”
Curling my legs underneath me beside him, I asked, “What’s up?”
“I don’t know whether he’s somehow responding to something he feels in me or there’s just some innate sense inside him that remembers the loss, but every year on this day, he’s a bear.”
“What is today?” I asked softly though I was pretty sure I knew.
“The anniversary of my wife’s death.”
I moved closer to him on the couch and put my hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry, Kian. Do you need to be alone?”
He shook his head.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
His eyes shuttered. “She was hit by a drunk driver,” he replied flatly.
“There’s more to it than that.”
He nodded shortly and huffed out a laugh. “I had a hangover. We needed diapers, and I had a hangover, so I stayed home with Isaiah.”
“She was laughing when she left the house, teasing me about my low tolerance.” His eyes shone. “It was the last time I saw her alive.” He turned his head to look at me. “It should have been me in the car. Not her. Never her.”
“Kian,” I breathed. “It doesn’t work that way.”
He scrubbed both hands over his face then stood up and paced back and forth, shaking out his hands as if to shake off the past.
“Isaiah misses his grandparents and he’s beginning to catch on that things aren’t right between me and Aaron. He’s asking questions I don’t know how to answer.”
“Have you tried being honest?”
He tilted his chin down toward me. “And have him angry with Aaron for not wanting me?”
“Mm, it’s a risk,” I conceded.
“The third house, the one I shouldn’t have purchased, is 25% outside the budget and I’ve barely even started.”
I opened my mouth to respond but he stopped walking and gave me a look of such utter despondency that I couldn’t speak.
“Aaron walked past me on the street and didn’t even look at me.”
I gasped, “Kian.”
“I burned dinner.” He sat down on the couch beside me and dropped his head into his hands. “And the pipe for the washing machine burst.”
“Oh, well,” I huffed out a laugh. “After a day like that, I’m surprised you’re still standing.”
“Honestly, Bridget? It seems the harder I try to hold it together, the faster it spins out of control.”
“I get that,” I murmured.
He covered his face with his hands and sat back on the couch with his head back. Voice muffled, he finished, “I miss her. I miss her and I love you and I’m struggling to integrate those seemingly opposing realities that roast me with guilt either way.”
I love you.
“You’re allowed to miss her, Kian. You’ll always miss her.” Swallowing, hoping to God he meant what he said, knowing it wasn’t the time but unable to stop myself, I whispered, “It doesn’t bother me that you still love her. Did you mean it when you said you love me?”
His eyes snapped open to meet mine. Face set in earnest lines, he stated, “I do love you, Bridget. You’re so damn easy to love, and even easier to fall in love with.”
“If this were any other day, I’d jump your bones. But because it’s today, how about I stay and cuddle you extra hard tonight?”
His lips tightened. “I failed her. I’m terrified I’m going to fail you.”
“You won’t.” I held his eyes. “I won’t let you.”
He nodded, but the tightness around his eyes betrayed his disbelief.
Once in bed, I wrapped myself around him, waiting until long after the tension left his body, and his breathing evened out before I allowed myself to drift off.
I woke up in the early hours of the morning to find him staring at the ceiling.
“What’s up, baby?” I whispered.
Angling his head toward me, he smiled wryly. “Me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dad joke of all dad jokes.”
He huffed out a breath and returned to staring at the ceiling.
I turned to my back. “What’s so interesting up there?”
As if he was pointing out the constellations, he pointed. “That right there is me walking away from Wren.” Moving his finger slightly, he continued. “That’s me lying on the couch while my wife lay dying. That one is me uprooting Isaiah, taking him away from his entire family.”
Voice dry and toneless, he went on to catalog the failures playing on a loop in his head.
“There’s me foolishly hoping for reconciliation.
“My mother’s face when she realized she might never meet her first grandchild.
“The police officer at the door after my wife’s accident.
“Dropping out of university…”
His voice trailed off.
“I don’t like this game,” I countered lightly. “Let’s play a different one.” Pointing at the ceiling, I began, “There’s Isaiah laughing at the beach the day you played with him in the waves. There’s you packing up your life to be there for your first child in whatever way he’ll let you.”
He began to speak but I cut him off. “It’s my turn, Sir. There’s your perseverance.” I pointed at more and more imaginary constellations. "That one is your kindness. Right there,” I wagged my finger, “is my personal favorite, your oh-so-talented tongue.”
“You deserve better,” he blurted out then turned toward me. In a much softer voice, almost apologetically, he repeated, “You can do better, Bridget.”
I looked back at him steadily, recognizing the spiral that had taken me down more than a time or two.
“I move on to someone else and then what?”
His brows crashed down, but he shrugged.
It was the shrug that did me in. “Then you can lie here and see me in the ceiling.” My ire rising, I pointed up. “There’s your replacement picking me up to take me to dinner in Mistlevale.”
“Bridget,” he clipped.
“Oh no,” I retorted. “You don’t get to pass me off onto someone else without facing the consequences.” Jerking my chin up at the ceiling, I said, “There’s your replacement with his hands on my hips as he plows into me from behind.”
“Stop.”
My finger moved across the ceiling, anger racing like wildfire through my veins. “There’s his tongue buried in my pussy. Oh, look! Here I’m on my knees—”
“Enough,” he snapped, rolling on top of me. Hands holding my head still, he stared down into my face. “I get it.”
My thoughts ran wild, my heart galloping alongside them. “Do you? Do you, Kian? Because I don’t want a man who can so easily hand me over to someone else.”
His hands tightened. “I won’t.”
Utterly incensed, I pushed further. If he was going to give me up, he’d know without a doubt what he was losing. “You want to see me riding another man, see his fingers pinching my nipples as I come? You want to watch that on your ceiling night after night after fucking night?”
“Bridget!” Gripping my hair, he stole my words with his kiss and filled my mouth with his tongue. His kiss was hard, his hold on my hair firm.
By the time he broke away, my lips were tingling.
My tongue darted out to soothe the sting.
“Never,” he growled. “Fucking say that shit to me again.”
Holding my own, I stared back at him. “Then don’t fucking give me up.”
“I won’t.” He compressed his lips together in a straight line, then, his mouth softening, he dipped his head and brushed his lips across mine. “I won’t.”
“Good,” I whispered, kissing him back. “Because it’s your tongue I want buried in my pussy.”
His hips jerked then rolled, his entire body tensing as he ground into me tightly then backed off with a forced exhale.
So controlled.
“It’s your fingers I want digging into my hips,” I whispered across his mouth, watching as his eyes fluttered shut.
So pretty.
“Your big cock filling me night after night after fucking night…”
Lifting up on one hand, he rolled me over onto my stomach and shoved first one knee, then the other, between my thighs.
Pushing back, he yanked my hips up until I balanced on my hands and knees. “Yes?” He demanded.
“Do your worst,” I challenged.
Chest rumbling, he whipped my shorts down my thighs, pushed my chest down onto the mattress, and shoved his face into my pussy. “Mine, Bridget,” he warned. “My fucking tongue in your pussy.”
“Yes,” I panted, eyes closed, hands fisted in the sheets.
Trailing his mouth along my thigh, he sank his teeth into the fleshy part of my butt, making me yelp.
Laving the sting away with his tongue, he dragged his lips up the line of my spine and then sat back on his knees.
His hands moved against the back of my thighs as he dropped his shorts, the hair on his legs a delicious tickle against my butt and my thighs.
Pushing back, I shamelessly rubbed my butt against him.
Reaching forward, he fisted his hand in my hair and tugged. Arching my back, he rasped, “See, Bridget? This is what happens when you push me too far.”
“You love it.” I laughed as he lined the head of his cock up at my core.
The fingers of his other hand bit into my hip as he slammed into me, grunting, “I fuckin’ need it.”
I gasped at the invasion, tilting my hips away from him, feeling him slow as he waited for my body to soften and accept him.
It didn’t take long. With a deep sigh, I arched further, canting my hips to take him deeper.
Zero finesse, all emotion, he drove into me as I settled in, giving him my body to use as he would and reveling in it.
My orgasm took me by surprise, ripping through me with the strength of a small hurricane.
His hips jerked erratically, coming to a stop pressed tight against me as he groaned out his release.
His hands gentled as he pulled out, tucking the sheet between my thighs as he rolled me to my side and crawled up beside me.
I opened my arms and rolled onto my back, lightly scratching his scalp, tunneling my fingers through his silky hair, as he rested his head on my breast.
I fuckin’ need it.
For once in my life, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Dropping a kiss onto his forehead, I closed my eyes. “I know you do.”