Chapter 16
Sixteen
Julian
I could barely believe what Ethan had told me.
Had Aria really told him that she was falling in love with us? I couldn’t tell if I was more frightened by the fact that she had verbalised it or by the fact that it didn’t terrify me the way I thought it should.
I’d spent my time with her, but I had no idea all of that was going through her mind. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t absolutely perfect, or like my child didn’t love her.
Worse things had certainly happened to me. To have a woman like Aria in love with me, that was the kind of thing guys dreamed about; the kind of thing I’d dreamed about ever since my ex first left. I peeked over at her.
We were in my car headed north to Decatur, where I had my own cabin. It was one of my favourite places to go, not just because it was away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but because it was right near a few perfect hunting trails.
I knew it would be a perfect, romantic place to take Aria, where I could have her all to myself.
She’d mentioned back when we first met that she was intrigued by my hunting hobby, and I figured there was no better way to introduce her to the craft than to show her where I spent my time.
Ronan agreed to watch Hazel for me, and I was going to enjoy a couple of days of having Aria’s attention totally on me.
Arriving at my cabin was a pit stop at best. Aria was clamoring to get outside, and even though I had no intentions of actually hunting (that wasn’t a very romantic activity), I knew it was the height of hunting season, so there would be tons of games to view, and it was just approaching sunset, and the scenery would be perfect.
I got her out on the trails, and she was blissed by the number of deer, pheasant, and rabbits we saw, and I explained to her the specifics of hunting deer versus small game.
We even got lucky, and I was able to show her my most favourite animal to hunt, the javelina.
It was rare to find them outside of Texas as far as the United States went, and even there, they were uncommon and damn difficult to hunt.
We had a bit of fun attempting to track one, and Aria thought it was hilarious how fast they were.
As the sun began to set, I took her out to one of the hills that overlooked the Decatur fields. I pulled out the picnic I’d packed for us to eat dinner, and set out a blanket, and she curled into me while we ate and watched the sunset.
“How often do you come here?” she asked.
“It was more before Hazel was born,” I told her. “Kids change everything.”
“I know, I recently had seven of them,” she responded, and I giggled.
“It was therapy for me to be able to come here while everything was happening with her mother. If I didn’t have this place to just come and sit and relax and get away from it for a little bit, I don’t know what I would have done,” I explained.
“I would scream. I would cry. Anything to just get it out.”
“Have you ever brought her here? Hazel, I mean,” Aria asked.
I shook my head.
“No. I don’t know that I’m ready to expose her to the world of hunting, or just death in general. It was hard enough discussing with her what it meant that her mother was moving across the country and she’d get to see her once a year moving forward if she was lucky.”
“I can relate to Hazel,” Aria said in a softer, sadder tone, and I looked over at her. She was staring out over the horizon, watching the land, but her mind was somewhere else.
“My family fell apart when I was her age.”
“Seriously?” I asked. How serendipitous that we would get a nanny who could actually relate to our children. It didn’t make me happy that she’d been through any pain, but it was just something else that was there for us to love about her.
“Yeah,” she said. “
My dad left us, really abruptly. According to my mum, they were great. He just up and left one day. It was so unexpected that she actually thought something bad had happened to him, but then a few weeks later, she got divorce papers in the mail.
I was an only child, so it was a bit easier for my mum to raise me on her own, but they had me young, so it was a struggle all the way around. She didn’t have a ton of money, and my grandparents wanted her to abort me, so they weren’t very helpful or invested.”
“Wow,” I responded. I couldn’t fathom what I would do if Hazel didn’t even have her grandparents.
“I’m sorry.” Aria shrugged.
“I turned out okay. My mum taught me the most important thing in the world: how to survive. For a while, I wondered why my dad didn’t love me enough to stay, or even stay involved, but my mum told me every day that I was special and that he didn’t see it because he was stupid.
I know now that she’s right.” She looked up at me.
“The parents who stick around are the ones I respect above anything.” My heart exploded. Suddenly, I didn’t just need to consider how Aria felt about me; I had to consider how I felt about Aria.
“I know that you feel like you’re falling in love with us,” I told her, not expecting the words to come out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure what my plan was with saying it to her.
“Yeah?” she replied. “How do you feel about that?”
“I feel that I wish I’d followed my instincts and kissed you back when you first came to my office.” Again, I wasn’t expecting to say what I was saying.
Aria’s eyes shimmered with happiness, and I knew why. Based on the way I’d said what I said, didn’t it sound like I was saying I was in love with her too? Was I?
I was just leaning in to kiss her when, out of nowhere, a downpour of rain started to drench us and our picnic.
We jumped up, I grabbed the blanket and we went running back up the trail towards my cabin, laughing the whole way.
When we got into the cabin, Aria started to peel off her drenched clothes, but I stepped up to her and pulled her hands away. I pushed her jacket off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor, then I slid my arms up her sides and took her shirt off as I moved.
She didn’t argue and relented to my movements as I started to undress her.
I kissed her cheeks, then her jawline, then her neck, and worked my way down her body.
She clasped the base of my shirt with her hands and pulled it over my head, and dropped it into the growing pile of wet clothes on the floor.
“You know what would feel good right about now?” I asked her.
She smiled, kissing my bottom lip and holding onto my waist. “I can think of several,” she replied.
I hummed. “We’ll get to that, but why don’t we start with a nice, hot bath?”
She kissed me again.
“That sounds marvellous.”
I wrapped my arms under her legs and lifted her from her feet and carried her through the cabin, to my favourite part of my getaway home, the bathroom. I’d had a huge, black porcelain basin tub crafted that was large enough to fit four people, and then I had the bathroom built around it.
I set Aria down on the counter in the bathroom, and tried to pull away to start the bath, but she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and kept me locked in place.
We were like teenagers who had finally gotten the chance to escape their parents and get some alone time.
My heart was racing and my skin was sizzling.
Aria made me feel like I was a superhero going a mile a minute.
I broke away from her long enough to get the water running in the tub. I dropped in a few beads of lavender and honey-scented bubble bath and then made my way back over to Aria to pull her pants and underwear from her body, and pull my own from mine.
I climbed into the water, and held out my hand, and then Aria climbed in as well, placing her back to me and sitting between my legs.
She settled in against me, and though I did intend to just enjoy the warm water with her in a moment of relaxation, the second her body was wet and shimmering, my cock decided it wanted something else.
I wrapped my hand around and dipped it into the water in front of Aria. She wrapped a hand behind her and wrapped it around my neck and leaned her head back against my shoulder. I cupped my hand over her pussy and started to massage it gently.
Aria let out a shallow moan into my ear and it turned me on so much more than I already was. She laced a hand between us and wrapped a hand around my cock and started to stroke it.
We worked in tandem, pleasuring one another at a slow, but wonderful pace. She turned her head to face me and I set my lips on hers. We made out while giving one another hand jobs, just letting the water wash over us and melt us into one another.
Aria was typically a very dirty talker, but the only sounds around us were the sloshing of water as Aria repositioned herself and lined me up to her hole.
She lowered herself over me, and the heat of the water mixed with the heat of Aria’s pussy was like the best kind of therapy.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close to me as she started to roll her hips back and forth, pleasuring herself on my cock.
Ordinarily, I was primal during sex, but something about Aria made me want to take my time and make sure that I’d taken in every bit of her.
“Let’s go to bed,” I said.
Aria nodded. “Yeah.”
She stood up, and I let out a light huff as I dropped out of her. I wanted to be back in her as soon as I could. I led her to my bedroom, and she pushed me to lie back onto the bed.
Our bodies were still dripping wet from the bath, but neither of us could be bothered to care.
Aria climbed on top of me and was about to place herself back on my cock, but I pulled at her legs until her pussy was hovering over my face. She grabbed onto my cock and started to work it up and down in her hands, and I stuck out my tongue and started to slurp up her clit.
“Yes, Julian,” she moaned. I smacked her ass lightly, intentionally trying to keep things romantic and calm. I flipped my tongue back and forth, and she started to rock her hips back and forth on my mouth.
“I have to have you.”
She slid backwards until she was directly over my cock.
She pulled on my muscular arms, and I sat up.
She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me again, slithering her tongue into my mouth.
I used my hands to guide her pussy back down over my cock.
It had been chilled from being wet and exposed to the air, so when Aria dropped down, the heat from inside was intense.
I breathed out. “Shit, that feels good.”
Aria didn’t let me get many words out. She kept her lips latched to mine as we thrusted our bodies against one another, making love without a care for anyone else in the world.
I wrapped my hands around her back and hugged her close. I thought about how Aria had admitted to me that she thought she was falling in love with us, and it made the moment even more special to me. I could feel that I was falling for her too. I didn’t ever want the night to end.
“I’m gonna cum,” Aria sang, to the sound of thunder starting up to match the rain outside.
“Me too,” I responded.
Aria continued to ride me until I was grunting and groaning. Her hips twitched and her pussy tightened around me as she came, and it was enough to take me over with her.
I thrust up into her until my own hips went weak and my legs started to feel like they were made of jelly. Aria laid her head against my shoulder and I leaned back, taking her with me until we were lying in the middle of the bed.
I grabbed one of the throw blankets nearby and pulled it over us, with the storm rumbling on outside, and us both basking in the afterglow of our passion, we both drifted off to sleep.