Chapter 26
Gwen
It’s late when I leave the office. The cool fog hangs around me as I walk the streets of New Orleans. Wandering through the night, I try to figure out how everything went wrong and, more importantly, how I will get us back on track. Or are Rex and I forever meant to be derailed?
Because nothing has come easy for us since the beginning.
Maybe it’s better if we just stop fighting.
Or maybe, this is just our style. The way we run our relationship, or lack thereof. Could it ever really be the things dreams are made of? Or will it forever just be a mix of bullshit pulling both of us in opposite directions when I know that all we both want is to be together?
Maybe in another world and time things could be different.
As I walk the dark streets, I can’t help but wonder, was it not supposed to be here and now?
Maybe, just maybe, what lies between us is too powerful.
It’s a mess of beautiful chaos that we both can’t tame.
Not even when we both fight so hard to try to.
Coming to a landing overlooking one of the many streets below, I realize I have wandered to the club. A small light illuminates one of the windows, and I smile, knowing fate sure has a funny way of making you always do the right thing.
The only person who could be there this late is Rex.
It’s now or never. It’s time to face up to everything in my past and what our future holds.
I look down at my small belly, and my body changing even though I can’t fully comprehend the magnitude of it all yet, and rub my slightly swollen stomach below my belly button.
How am I supposed to tell him? How am I supposed to say what I need to and make it sound legitimate, especially after finding out he has known all these years about the secret I held in the past?
A past I’ve been trying to escape for a decade.
I almost died the night my sister did, but it wasn’t just her accident that derailed me for years afterward.
It was the future I knew I was too young to have with the man I already knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
It was the horror a few days later watching myself lose a life I was just beginning to want, to feel, to need.
All of it was too much, and I have shut down these last ten years trying to escape it all.
I’ve been trying to outrun all the nightmares that won’t leave me alone about a man I still love and a future I thought was lost.
Until now. When fate dealt us a second chance.
Looking up, I straighten my spine and tell myself I can do this.
I can finally release what I’ve held inside all these years and set it free.
I can finally face Rex, his demons, and the past he wrestles with.
A past we both wrestle with. It’s time we both decide, and there is no time like the present to finally figure all this shit out.
I take the steps two at a time, my feet race towards a decision I have finally come to terms with.
It’s as if I can’t get there fast enough.
Can’t get it all out fast enough. The secrets.
The heartache. The uncertainty the future holds.
I suddenly feel the need to explain. The need for deliverance.
A deliverance from the past into my future.
All I can do now is race toward the club and hope it is him.
* * *
Entering the building, the night feels cold and still around me.
I follow the low light and see Rex slumped over the bar top, drink in hand and a nearly half-empty bottle of scotch next to him.
He doesn’t notice me at first, so I stand and take him in.
He’s a man destroyed by a past and possibly not ready to face the future I’m about to lay on him.
I hesitate for a moment as fear rises and fills my heart. I take my time as I step down the final three steps into the bar area and wonder just how I’m even supposed to start this conversation, let alone how it will all end. As I near the bar, his head lifts, and it looks as if he has been crying.
His eyes are slightly puffy, and a redness surrounds them.
He straightens up and runs his hands through his hair as I approach.
After a moment, he raises his glass to his lips and finishes the amber liquid in one large gulp.
Setting the glass back on the counter with a loud thud, he pulls another out from behind the bar and pours two shots.
“Come have a drink with me, Gwen,” he slurs harshly. “A toast to the end. The end of all the bullshit between us. Fuck if it doesn’t feel good to finally let go, huh, sweetheart? Stop running. Stop the madness and say goodbye.”
He picks up his glass and empties it instantly, never taking his eyes off mine over the rim.
His face doesn’t even flinch at the double shot he’s just taken as he slams the glass back down on the counter. His eyes glaze over as he stares at me. Sadness, heartache, hatred fill his eyes.
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Gwen?”
He rounds the bar quickly, approaching me like a predator.
Stopping right in front of me, I stand tall as he reaches out and grabs my neck, forcing me against his chest. I feel the heat of his breath and smell the scent of his cologne mixed with the scotch on his tongue.
He smiles once he knows he has me right where he wants me.
His face is a dangerous place to look as I try to stand my ground and escape his embrace, but I don’t back down.
Rex slowly inches closer until our lips are seconds away from touching.
“Tell me what you want, Gwen,” he whispers with a shaky breath.
“Because hell if I’ve not been trying to give it to you all these years.
You screw with my mind, driving me fucking crazy.
You keep me in the dark only to punish me in the light of day.
I want you, Gwen. All of you. But I can’t fight for us alone.
Do you really think I can live with myself if I’m forced to one day see you in the arms of another man?
It fucking kills me, Gwen. I’ve had to stand by and watch for a fucking decade, and I can’t do it anymore.
I need you, all of you. But…” he trails off, and I catch my breath as his words steal my heart, and break it wide open.
“If you think I don’t fucking need you, all of you, you don’t understand what you do to me.
Fuck, what do you want, Gwen? Because damn it if I don’t die a little more every day trying to fucking give it to you. ”
His lips crush against mine, leaving me absolutely breathless as I let him consume me.
I let him take what he wants as his tongue caresses my own, and his hands frame my face.
He drops one hand around my waist and pulls me against his middle.
I feel his need rising and kiss him back without resistance.
I take as he gives. He covets as I relent, and soon, we find ourselves up against the bar across the room.
He pulls away from me and hoists me into his arms swiftly. Laying me on the bar top, he pushes my skirt up around my waist. Before I can protest, he pulls my panties down around my knees. I try to sit up, but his hand wraps around my neck and pushes me back against the bar top.
“I wasn’t done with you the other night,” he rasps as his fingertips trail up my inner thigh.
I know I should stop him. I should make him wait until he hears all I have to say. Until he can decide if this, me, our baby, is what he really wants. But, under his dominance, I’m powerless.
Picking up the bottle of scotch, he pours it down my center. The cold liquid adds to the ecstasy as it hits my warm core, and my hips rise as he takes in a sharp, shaky breath. He runs his finger up my slit. My low purr fills the room as he rubs my clit.
“If we’re saying goodbye, I’m taking my toast to us off your sweet, pretty pussy.
” He licks up my center before diving his tongue deep inside me.
I let out a strangled gasp. His mouth devours my entrance like it is his last meal.
My only option is to watch as he stares into my eyes and takes what he wants from me.
“Rex, please,” I pant, but he doesn’t stop as he licks up to my clit and harshly sticks two fingers inside me. His slightly drunken stare never wavers from mine as he continues to pleasure me on the bar top. “I need to…”
His mouth pulls away, but his fingers quickly curl, finding their target. He pushes them deeper with such force I release a slight scream. “You need to what, Gwen?” he asks angrily. “What do you need that I’m not fucking giving you?”
My eyes hold his stare as he sticks a third digit inside my tight walls and stretches me to my max.
I fight the urge to let go as my climax builds.
I need to stop him, I know. But he knows just what to say, what to do, and how to make me defenseless.
His mouth lowers back to my clit as my insides clench down harder.
Sucking it between his lips, he nibbles down just hard enough to add the perfect amount of pressure to my swollen flesh, and my head falls back in ecstasy.
My climax builds. I fist his hair in my hands as my head falls back forward, and I watch him take me.
His free hand rises and presses against my lower stomach.
He licks up my flesh once, twice, three times until I am on the brink…
and then stops. Slowly pulling his fingers from deep inside me, he licks them clean and smirks at me.
“Something to remember me by,” he chuckles. “But hell if I will give you what you want or need any longer if you don’t give in return.”
He backs away from me and quickly pours himself another drink. Sitting up straight, it takes me a moment to come back to reality as I steady my breathing.
Are you fucking kidding me right now? Is he actually serious? What man has that kind of restraint?
Oh, that’s right, Rex fucking Roberts, the stubborn asshole, that’s who.