57. THIRTY
THIRTY
EDEN
Macon is passed out on a sofa in one of the many reception rooms as I swing on the hanging daybed beneath the hidden pergola outside.
It’s secluded enough to give me the illusion of solitude, yet not so much that if I lean to the side, I can’t see the shadows of everyone inside or hear their laughter tinkling across the grass.
Seattle drizzle patters against the cedar shelter, bringing with it a cold sting of wind that makes me tug the moleskin blanket I pilfered tighter around my shoulders.
There's melancholia in the air I’m breathing tonight. Sebastian’s threats to serve me with sole custody papers have intensified in the last twelve hours, and though Alex told me a while ago that he’s set me up with a lawyer, I’ve yet to meet with her and start laying out some plans of my own.
I’ve been distracted…and shamefully naive to think that, because I haven’t heard from Sebastian since the photos of Macon and me outside our old apartment building were released to the press, he’d been reconsidering his pursuit to disrupt our son’s life.
The email I received this morning with the subject Last chance or I tell everyone, with several links attached, was an unholy reckoning.
It was also way too ominous for me to click on, so it’s still sitting there, burning a hole in my inbox.
Leaves crunch under slow footfalls, and I let my head fall back against the swing with my eyes closed.
I know who it is from smell alone. After last night, his masculine, earthy scent has forever imprinted itself in my memory.
With my eyes shut like this, I swear I can still feel his hands on me, demanding yet gentle.
Can still hear the deep growl of my name on his lips as he came.
Maybe closing my eyes wasn’t the best idea. The images are brighter this way, our bodies writhing in full color and perfect clarity against the darkness of my eyelids.
The swing dips under his weight, and I blink my eyes open to find his boyish smile glinting in the moonlight. His hair is slightly damp from the rain he had to walk through to get to me, and there’s a dusting of goosebumps over his arms from the wind.
I toss him a corner of the blanket.
“Thanks.” He grins wider, his eyes not leaving mine.
It’s the first time we’ve been alone since we fell asleep last night in a knot of arms and legs, my face in his neck, his buried in my hair.
For a man so scared of commitment, he’d clung to me all night, pulling me back in each time I grew too hot and tried to roll away.
He held me like he was scared I’d leave if he let go.
“Enjoying the party?” I ask. I don’t know why. There are so many things I could say to him right now, and small talk isn’t one of them, but my tongue suddenly feels too big for my mouth.
He scootches closer to me and lays his hand possessively across my thigh. “I am now.”
I stare down at his hand, my lungs burning from holding my breath.
I don’t know why I’m doing it, just that his presence, his touch, makes it hard to think about anything but him.
And I know we need to talk about what happened between us last night, and we definitely need to discuss Sebastian’s new threats, but selfishly, I need this moment of peace before we unravel it all again.
I let my hand drift over his then curl my fingers around it.
“Are you okay?” he whispers.
I toss his own words back at him. “I am now.”
He smiles and looks out over the garden, his long legs taking over swinging us gently back and forth.
“My parents used to have a porch swing,” he says, and my breath stalls in my lungs.
“It wasn’t as fancy as this one. It was just something my dad threw together with some old planks of wood and chains, but my mom would sit on it every night with a blanket and read a book or something.
I used to watch her from my bedroom window when she thought I was asleep. ”
I don’t dare speak, too afraid to break whatever magic is making him open up to me like this.
“They had flowers just like this too.” He gazes at the line of dahlias, foxgloves, and Pacific bleeding hearts that border this little hidden sanctuary.
“Mom’s favorite was lavender. It’s a pain in the ass to grow here because the continuous rain would lead to root rot, but when she managed it, she’d break off the heads and rub them between her hands.
I miss how she always used to smell of it.
I miss…” his voice breaks, “her. I miss both of them.”
The tug of sadness in his voice has me crawling into his lap and straddling his waist. My hands find home on each side of his head, my thumbs stroking the tops of his reddened cheekbones.
“Brynn was only six when we lost them,” he says.
“I don’t know how much she remembers of them because I’ve spent the last twenty years refusing to talk about that time in my life, but I sometimes feel like I can remember everything.
That I could recount every day of my first ten years, minute by minute, and I don’t know if that’s a blessing or if it makes it all so much harder. ”
My heart shatters at the sight of his glistening eyes, and I’m not quick enough to swipe away the tears that seep in tiny rivulets down his face.
“Is it bad that I wish I didn’t remember them?”
The pain in his voice pierces me like a dagger.
“No.” I tilt his head back to look him in the eye, scraping my nails through the hair at the back of his neck. “I think you just want relief from the pain.”
“How do I get that?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing.” I trace the tight lines between his brows with my nail, soothing them away. “Keep talking about them.”
His hands wind around my back, stroking up and down before settling on my waist. “I don’t want to talk about them anymore.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to right now, but maybe—”
He cuts me off. “I want to do something else right now, though.”
“What do you—”
He seizes up toward me, gripping the back of my head and searing his lips to mine. It’s embarrassing how quickly I melt into him, how loudly I hum from the first taste of his tongue, and how unmissably I begin to tremble.
“I know,” he whispers into my mouth. “Me too.”
“You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”
He pulls back and rests his forehead against mine, his breathing as ragged as mine.
“I didn’t kiss you for any other reason than because I wanted to.
No, because I had to.” Dropping his hands to my hips, he uses them to grind me over the erection straining against his zipper.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about it since last night.
Hell, I haven’t stopped thinking about kissing you since the moment I saw you in the dental office with ink all over your face.
Do you have any idea how torturous it is to be around you when all I can think about is how many times I can make you come before I fuck you? ”
A moan sneaks through my lips as he drags me harder against him, my clit drawing perfect lines along his covered dick. Up. Down. Up. Down. I’m almost there already from his words alone.
“Shit, Eden.” His head falls against the back of the swing, his eyes half-lidded, his pupils blown. “You think I’m the one trying to be a distraction when I’ve spent every game this season trying to force myself to keep an eye on the ball instead of you?”
He kisses me again. It’s messy and sweet with an edge of desperation that sends my mind spinning.
How we could go from talking about his dead parents a few minutes ago to clawing at each other’s clothes is beyond me, and though he says this isn’t a distraction, I don’t mind being one for him right now.
He’s given me so much more in the past twenty-four hours alone than I have for him in all the months we’ve known each other. And it’s only served to make me fall deeper in love with him—so deep I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find my way out.
“I can’t control myself with you, Eden. I’ve tried. God, I’ve tried so hard, but after last night, I don’t think I’ve got the strength to fight it anymore.”
Hope blooms like cherry blossoms in my chest. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
His lips fall to my neck, pressing wet kisses along the column of my throat and into the divot beside my collarbone. His fingers find the hem of my dress, dragging it up until it’s bunched around my waist so he can knead the soft flesh of my thighs as he works.
“We should stop,” I gasp, throwing my head back. “People will see.”
“Let them.”
“Alex.”
“No one can see us out here, baby. It’s just you and me.”
You and me.
God, that sounds like heaven.
I’m so weak for this man that even if we weren’t hidden out of sight and he asked to fuck me, I’d probably say yes. But I don’t want to think about what that says about me right now, just as I don’t want to confront any of the other pressing issues that imminently need my attention.
I rise onto my knees and fumble for his zipper, dragging it down with a quiet zzzhht. He reaches between my legs and pulls my panties to one side, sliding a finger along my already soaked pussy.
“Is this all for me?” he asks, as if in awe.
“Well, it wouldn’t be for anybody else.”
It will never be for anybody else.
I can’t imagine another man ever commanding my body the way Alex does or igniting my heart and soul in the way he can with his kindness and his care and his fierce, unyielding protectiveness. I can’t imagine I’ll ever want another man to even try.
I manage to spring his cock free from his boxers, the head of him swollen and already seeping. It’s hot in my hand, almost burning, as I give it a few rough pulls, our position making it difficult to handle him with any real finesse.
He doesn’t seem to mind, though. His hips roll up into my hand, his expression pinched into something that looks almost pained. When I coast my thumb over his slit, he jerks and sinks his teeth into my neck.
“You drive me fucking insane,” he groans into my skin, hot breath ghosting across my throat.
“How much I want you, how much I lo—feel for you. It’s not normal.
I’m goddamn obsessed with you. And the more I try to fight it, to swim back to shore, the riptide just pulls me farther out.
I’m drowning in you, Eden. You’re fucking destroying me. ”
That’s the second time he’s brought up riptides in the last twenty-four hours, and I’m beginning to realize there may be further context that I’m not privy to. Not that I need it. If his words weren’t enough, the desperate, aching edge to his voice as he says them is enough to work it out.
“I don’t want to destroy you, Alex.” I pull my hand from his dick and force his face up so I can look into his reverent, shimmering eyes. “And this doesn’t have to kill you. If you let it, this could save you.”
“You think I need saving, baby girl?”
“A little.” I press a gentle kiss to his lips. “From yourself, maybe. You’ve saved me so many times. You’ve spent most of your life saving everyone. Me. Brynn. Leo. Macon. Maybe it’s time to let someone save you for once.”
His hips roll, his hands falling to my waist to grind me back over him.
“I might be a lost cause,” he admits, though half of his focus has been pulled to where skin meets skin. My softness against his hardness. “Maybe it’s too late for me.”
“You’re the furthest thing from a lost cause, Alex.
” I position myself over him and sink down.
I’m not going to beg him to be with me, but I can show him what he’d be missing if he decided to walk away.
The first couple of inches are slow going, but then, just like last night, my body relaxes and welcomes him home. “You feel that?”
His pupils blow wide, and his lips part in wonderment. “Magic.”
Exactly.
Grounding his feet on the floor, he pushes back, swaying us so that I rock against him in a way that make me shiver. “Do that again.”
Rain patters against the wood above us, and a sharp gust of wind stings at my arms as he trails his hands down my back to cup my ass. The warmth of his skin soothes away the chill, somehow making me shiver harder, and he pulls me harder against him with every slow rock of the swing.
Sparks erupt like it’s the Fourth of July, and I choke out a moan, an orgasm creeping up on me so quickly that my breath locks in my lungs.
Sebastian never let me ride him like this.
If I was on top—which was most times, considering he’s a lazy, selfish bastard—he said the back-and-forth motion was pointless because it did nothing for him.
But one look at Alex’s face as he watches me come apart on top of him reminds me, for the millionth time, that he is nothing like my ex-husband.
Still, I find myself asking, “Is this even doing anything for you?”
He fucking whimpers. “Seeing you like this? Taking what you need from me, using my dick to make yourself come? It’s doing everything for me.”
As if to prove the point, he swings us faster, pulls me back and forth harder, and moans every time I do. His breathing matches mine, sharp and ragged. His lips are parted, his brow creased with concentration, like it’s taking everything in him not to come before me.
When he slips a hand between us to pinch my clit, I can’t hold on anymore.
A long keening moan tears from my throat as the orgasm rips through me and breaks me apart. I latch my teeth onto his shoulder to muffle the sound, but it goes on and on and on. I’m shaking, a mess of gasps and jerks, when I finally pull back to look at him.
Just in time too.
Because watching Alex come is somehow even better than coming myself. There’s so much pleasure written on his face, in his half-lidded eyes and kiss-swollen lips, that I can almost feel it myself. As if he’s pouring everything he’s feeling into me so I can experience it too.
“Eden.” My name is a prayer, tortured and dragged from his throat. “Fuck, Eden, I—”
He stops himself again, so I finish the sentence for him.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t say it back. But that’s okay. He might not be ready to say the words out loud yet, but I know they’re in there. I know they’re waiting.
And I know they’re true.