37. NINETEEN
NINETEEN
ALEX
Eden hasn’t seen it yet.
It’s a good thing too, as the photo I’ve been staring at for the past ten minutes is one of her snarling, with a scarlet face and flames of fury in her eyes.
It’s a view of her I’ve never seen before, like she’s trying to murder someone with the force of her gaze alone. And the way she’s shielding Macon reminds me of a lioness about to annihilate a male lion for getting too close to her cub.
It’s actually kinda hot.
But then, everything about her is. A fact that is becoming more and more inconvenient the longer I’m in her presence—which is always, at the moment, considering my bright idea to have them both move in with me.
I’ve jerked off so many times over the last few days that I’m developing carpal tunnel syndrome.
That aside, I’ve taken to sharing my space with them better than I anticipated.
The days are simple. I leave for practice at eight, by which time Eden has already left to take Macon to school.
I come home around six, we eat dinner together, then I might play some video games with Macon before he goes to bed at eight.
Eden typically goes back to her room after that, leaving me alone for the rest of the evening.
I get the impression she doesn’t want to impose on my space and time, and I don’t know how to tell her that I kind of wish she would.
“What are you looking at?”
I slam my phone screen down on the coffee table in the living room. “Nothing.”
She stands beside the sofa in a pink cherry-printed loungewear set that matches the shade of her lips, a firework of color in the monochrome room. Dark hair tumbles loose around her shoulders, and her nipples poke subtly through the fabric.
Must hold eye contact.
Must not stare at Eden’s tits.
After almost a week of her living here, I’ve learned that the first thing she does when she gets home is change into comfy clothes and take off her bra. That detail is probably the main contributing factor in the frequency with which I’m masturbating at the moment.
I pull a throw cushion into my lap to hide the situation in my pants.
“When will the menace be gracing us with her presence?” I ask, hoping to direct her attention away from my phone.
She'll be meeting my nieces for the first time tonight, and by proxy, Macon will be too. Roman will also be joining us, as will Aspen, who will inevitably create more chaos than all three children combined.
“Her last class ended thirty minutes ago, so any time now.”
“I’ll get my credit card out in preparation, then. It’ll save me time later.” I’m only half joking. There’s a large possibility she will, in fact, demand money from me for one thing or another.
Eden’s mouth quirks upward. “Did she ever actually give it back?”
I consider that. “No, I don’t think she did.”
“And what about the other guys? When are they coming?”
I was worried that having everyone over tonight would be too much too soon. Eden and Macon are both still adjusting to living in my apartment, and I didn’t want to disrupt their lives even more than I have already. But Eden assured me it was fine, so I’ll take her word for it.
“In an hour or so.” I make the grave mistake of dipping my gaze to her chest. It’s only brief. Not in my control at all. My eyes move of their own accord, and my dick springs back to life.
This shit is getting painful now.
I leap from the sofa like the cream cushions have burned me and declare that I need a shower.
Eden’s confused stare is hot on my back as I sprint through my bedroom to the bathroom.
I don’t even grab clothes on my way. Just drop my pants, turn on the water, and jerk my dick until I’ve painted the shower glass white.
And still, I feel little satisfaction.
Never, in all my almost thirty years of life have I wanted to fuck a woman so badly. It doesn’t make any sense. You might assume, given my prolific sexual history, that my past hook-ups transpired due to an overactive sex drive and an excess of testosterone.
Truthfully, Dr. Sharma wasn’t entirely off base in her theory that I pursued casual sex as a means of distracting myself from my inherent, bone-deep loneliness.
It was never because I was so horny that I needed a release.
What I needed was relief.
Relief from the pain of my past and the darkness of my own self-imposed isolation.
But this…this unrelenting, incessant desire I have for Eden is something entirely different.
It’s like I need to know what it’s like to touch her body, to hold her, to kiss her in a way that isn’t designed for the eyes of other people.
I want to feel her melt into me, not because we’re being watched, but because she simply can’t help herself.
I want it messy.
I want it to be real.
And it’s scaring the ever-loving fuck out of me.
When I finally materialize from the shower, dressed in a Henley and a pair of track pants, I can hear Aspen’s voice booming down the hallway.
“You know what I find unfair?” she’s saying as I step back into the living area. “Your namesake is a biblical paradise. I’m named after a ski resort.”
Macon looks up at her from the rug, where he’s building a Lego Ninjago I bought for him a few days ago. “At least your name doesn’t rhyme with bacon.”
“Hey.” Eden gapes at him, affronted. “Macon is a cool name. You should be glad you didn’t end up with what your dad wanted to call you.”
“What was that?”
“Bartholomew.”
Macon pulls a face of utter disgust. “Macon is fine, then, I guess.”
I snort a laugh at the topic of conversation, and three sets of eyes snap to mine. My gaze, however, only zeroes in on one.
Eden must have changed in the time I was in the shower. Dressed now in a pair of light-wash jeans with tiny, embroidered love hearts and a pastel-pink cardigan, she looks adorable but no less hot than she did before.
Her sister may love to poke fun at her cardigans, but they’ve always looked great on her. Everything does. Even when her clothes were worn and tired, Eden has always been stunning.
I’m glad she only updated her style when she went shopping with Aspen, not changed it completely. Everything she wears now is still her. It’s a fact that makes me happy, because I never once believed she needed to change herself to be with me.
I’m staring again.
Darting my gaze away to Aspen, I find her wearing a checkerboard skirt that she’s matched with a technicolor sweater and bright-pink cowboy boots. Her hair is in space buns on either side of her head, and her lipstick is an obtrusive shade of violet.
Both women may have been born from the same parents, but they couldn’t be more different.
“Nice place you’ve got yourself, Alex,” Aspen says with a wry smile, sipping from a long-stemmed glass of red wine that l imagine she’s pilfered from my collection. “Did you pick the color scheme to match your soul?”
I shake my head, flicking on the lamp. The sun has started to wane, the sky glowing lilac through the windows. “No, actually, I picked it to match yours.”
She howls a laugh. The woman sounds like a damn coyote. “Oh, please. You’re just jealous of my zest and whimsy.”
“Is that what you’re calling it?”She gestures down at herself. “I have so much zest I’m practically a lemon.”
“You’re a threat to society.”
“Says you, who, at this point, has sown his seed over the entire North American continent.”
Macon looks up at his mom in confusion. “What does that mean? Is Alex a farmer?”
Eden clamps her lips shut in an effort not to laugh and bends low over her knees to speak to him gently. “No, buddy.”
She doesn’t expand further.
Macon, however, is not finished with his line of questioning. “Why are they arguing? Do they not like each other?”
“This is just something they do.” Eden flicks her gaze between me and her sister with a small smile of amusement. “It confused me at first too, but I think they enjoy it.”
Macon pulls a face. “That’s weird.”
“Agreed.”
Now that that’s settled, I look back to the woman in question. “I’ll have you know, I haven’t sown my seed in quite a while now.”
Aspen takes a large gulp of wine, arching her brows over the rim of her glass. “Define a while.”
Well, I don’t know the exact timeframe, but I haven’t woken up in another person’s bed since before I met Eden, which was, what, like a month ago? More?
Huh.
That’s longer than I thought. No wonder my dick is doing its damndest to override my brain and bury itself in the closest available hole. But if that were true, then surely I’d also be feeling the emotional side effects that have always followed any previous short periods of abstinence.
The loneliness.
The pain.
The fear.
I haven’t felt a single one of those things since Eden walked into my life.
Weird. I won’t dwell on it.
“I don’t know, like a month?”
Aspen blinks. She turns to her sister. “Was that a condition of your arrangement? I mean, that’s smart. If he’s only supposed to be planting his seeds in your allotment, then it would look really bad if he was sprouting buds elsewhere.”
I’m starting to lose track of these euphemisms.
Macon looks up from his Lego again, his eyes wide and inquisitive. “What plants are you growing, Alex?”
Jesus Christ.
“Tomatoes.”
“That’s cool.” He lights up. “Can you show me them?”
I give him a tight smile. “Sure, buddy.”
Shit, now I have to buy an allotment and plant some fucking tomatoes.
Aspen, who has been watching this exchange with unabashed glee, gestures at her sister. “Well?”
Eden tugs on the hem of her sweater, her eyes downcast as she gnaws on her lip. “No. I hadn’t thought about it, actually.”
“So, you just decided on your own?” Aspen asks me.
“Guess so.”
Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it either.
Sure, it would be pretty counterproductive to have sex with other women while trying to maintain the image of a monogamous relationship, particularly with the risk of it being leaked to the media.
But then, I have the phone numbers of women on hand who I know for a fact would be discreet.