“Angel.” He held his hand out to me.
I stared at it a moment. All day long, he’d offered me his hand. Such a simple thing, really, but it was powerful. I’m here, it said. You’re not alone. We can do this together.
Rising from my seat on the sofa, I linked my fingers with his and let him lead me to the bedroom and into the bathroom. There, I went through nearly the same routine as he did. Brushing my teeth, washing my face. He added the step of taking one of the pills Dr. Petersen had prescribed. Then I followed him into the bedroom and let him undress me, before sliding another T-shirt over my head. He tucked me in with a soft, slow kiss.
“Where are you going?” I asked, when he walked away.
“Nowhere.” He stripped with brusque efficiency, leaving his boxer briefs on. Then he joined me in bed, helped Lucky scramble up, then turned off the light.
Rolling toward me, he caught me around the waist and pulled me back against him, spooning behind me. I moaned softly at the heat of his body and shivered as it combated the chill in my bones.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the sound and feel of him breathing. Within a few moments, the tempo fell into the rhythmic evenness of sleep.
The wind whips through my hair as I walk along the shore, my feet sinking into the sand as the surf erodes every step. Ahead of me, I see the weathered shingles of the beach house Gideon bought for us. It sits perched above the tide on tall stilts, its many windows gazing far out over the water. Gulls circle and cry out above me, their quick dips and arrested hovering like a dance in the salt-tinged breeze.
“I can’t believe I’m going to miss the reception.”
I turn my head and discover my mother walking beside me. She’s wearing the same elegant formal gown I last saw her in. She’s so beautiful. Truly breathtaking. My eyes burn to look at her.
“We’re all going to miss it,” I tell her.
“I know. And I worked so hard on it.” She glances at me, the ends of her hair fluttering along her cheek. “I did manage to work some touches of red in.”
“Did you?” That makes me smile, despite my pain. She does love me the best way she knows how. Just because it’s not always the way I want her to doesn’t mean it’s not precious for what it is.
“It really is a garish color for a wedding, though. It was difficult.”
“It’s kinda your fault, you know, for buying that red dress I wore the first night Gideon took me out as his date.”
“Is that what inspired you?” She shakes her head. “Next time, you should pick a softer accent color.”
“There won’t be a next time. Gideon is it for me.” I pick up a shell, then toss it back into the water it came from. “There were times I wasn’t sure we’d make it, but I don’t worry about that anymore. We were our own worst enemy, but we let go of the baggage weighting us down.”
“The first few months are supposed to be the easy part.” My mom dances a little ahead of me and gives a graceful twirl. “The courtship. Fabulous trips, sparkling jewels.”
I snort. “It wasn’t easy for us. The beginning was the rockiest. But it gets smoother every day.”
“You’ll have to help your father find someone,” she says, the girlish delight faded from her voice. “He’s been lonely for so long.”
“You’re a hard act to follow. He still loves you.”
She shoots me a sad smile, then looks out over the water. “I had Richard … He’s such a good man. I wish he’d be happy again.”
I think of my stepfather and worry. My mother was everything to him. What will give him joy now that she’s gone?
“I’ll never be a grandmother,” she says thoughtfully. “I died young and in my prime. That’s not so terrible, is it?”
“How can you ask me that?” I let the tears flow. I searched my soul all day because I couldn’t cry. Now that they’re here, I welcome them. It feels as if a dam has burst.
“Don’t cry, honey.” She stops and hugs me, filling the air I breathe with the scent of her perfume. “You’ll see that—”
I woke with a gasp, my body racked by a hard jerk of surprise. Lucky whimpered and pawed at me, kneading into my stomach. I stroked his velvety head with one hand and swiped at my eyes with the other, but they were dry. The pain of my dream was already fading into a distant memory.
“Come here,” Gideon murmured, his voice a rough warm beacon in our moonlit bedroom. His arms came around me, pulling me back against him.
Turning into him, I sought his mouth and found it, sinking into him with a lush, deep kiss. Surprise held him motionless a moment, and then his hand was cupping the back of my head, holding me in place as he took over.
I tangled my legs with his, feeling the coarse brush of hair, the deliciously warm skin, and the powerful muscles underneath. The soft, rhythmic stroking of his tongue soothed and aroused me. No one kissed like Gideon. The coaxing demand of his mouth was searingly sexual, yet it was also tender. Reverent. His lips were both firm and soft, and he used them to tease, to brush gently against my own.
Reaching between us, I cupped his penis in my hand, stroking with a demand that answered his. He swelled to my touch, lengthening until the broad head pushed up beneath the elastic of his waistband. He groaned, his hips thrusting into my caress.
“Eva.”
I heard the question in the way he said my name.
“Make me feel,” I whispered.
His hand slid beneath my shirt, his fingers drifting feather-light across my belly until he palmed my breast. He squeezed, plumping the aching flesh before his clever fingers gripped my nipple. With a decadent knowledge of my body, Gideon rolled and tugged the hard, tight point of my breast, the relentless pressure and pulling sending pulses of need through my entire body.
I moaned, aroused. Desperate. My legs tightened around his so I could rub my damp sex against his thigh.
“Does your pretty cunt ache, angel?” He nibbled at the corner of my lips, the words a seduction all their own. “What does it need? My tongue … my fingers … my cock?”
“Gideon.” I whimpered shamelessly when he pulled away, my arms reaching for him as he rose above me. He hummed a soft sound of reassurance and dropped Lucky carefully to the floor. Then his hands were at my hips, pulling my underwear down to my knees.
“You haven’t answered me, Eva. What do you want me to put into your greedy little cunt? All of the above?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “Everything.”
A moment later my legs were in the air and his dark head was lowering to the sensitized flesh between my thighs.
I held my breath, waiting. Folded as I was, I couldn’t see …
The hot, wet velvet of his tongue slid between the tender folds of my sex.
“Oh, God!” I arched into a rigid bow.
Gideon purred. I struggled, trying to lift my hips up to the ecstasy of his wicked mouth. Gripping my thighs, he held me in place, tasting me at the pace he wanted, licking over and around the slick opening … taunting me with my hunger to feel his tongue inside me. His lips circled my throbbing clit, his mouth suckling, the flat of his tongue rubbing across that sensitive pleasure point.
“Please …” I didn’t care that he made me beg. The more I gave him, the more he gave back to me.
But he made me wait as he savored me, his hair caressing the tender skin at the back of my thighs, his tongue massaging my clit with the faintest of pressures.
I pressed my hands to my face. “That feels so good … Don’t stop …”
My mouth fell open when he licked lower, dipping the merest fraction into the trembling clutch of my body … then lower still, rimming the rosette that quivered beneath the silky caress.
“Oh!” I gasped, half mad with the barrage of sensation after hours of numbness.
His growl shivered through me. My body jerked as he finally gave me what I wanted, his stiffened tongue pushing into my slick heat with a slow, delicious thrust.
“Yes,” I gasped. “Fuck me.”
>
His mouth was exquisite, the source of all pleasure and torment, his tongue wicked in its sensual assault, plunging between the clenching delicate muscles.
Gideon ate me with tautly driven focus, so avid and greedy that I writhed with the incredible ecstasy pulsing through my body. There was pressure, and then his thumb slid into my rear and began fucking the tender opening. The fullness there contrasted with the rhythmic thrusts of his tongue. My core tensed. I hovered tautly, on the precipice of orgasm …
I screamed his name, my body on fire, my skin hot and damp. I was alive with pleasure, burning with it. The climax shattered me, broke me into pieces. But Gideon wouldn’t relent, his tongue sliding up to lash my clit. One orgasm rolled into the next.
Sobbing, coming hard and endlessly, I pressed my fists to my eyes. “No more,” I pleaded hoarsely, my limbs trembling hard as my core spasmed with yet another rush. “I can’t take any more.”
I felt the mattress dip as he moved, one hand holding my ankles. I heard the snap of his waistband as he shoved his boxer briefs down.
“How do you want it?” he asked darkly. “Slow and sweet? Fast and rough?”
Oh God …
I forced my answer past dry lips. “Deep. Hard.”
He came over me, pushing my legs back until I was bent in half.
“I love you,” he vowed fiercely, gruffly.
The lush crest of his thick cock surged into my sex, stroking over tissues already swollen and tender.
Folded as I was, my legs bound by my underwear around my knees, it was tight inside me and he was so big. I was stretched by his girth, my sensitive flesh stinging from the forcefulness of his possession. And he still had more to give.
Groaning my name, Gideon swiveled his hips, pulling out, pushing in, working the heavy shaft deeper. “Are you feeling this, angel?” he demanded, his voice gruff with desire.
“You’re all I feel,” I moaned, needing to move, to take more. But he kept me restrained, his body fucking me with destructive expertise.
The feel of him … so hard … the relentless, leisurely thrusts …
My fingers grasped at the sheets. My sex rippled frantically around him, grasping at the wide head of his penis with ravenous greed. Every withdrawal left me empty, every thick hot slide forced pleasure through my veins like a drug.
“Eva. Christ.”
Gideon loomed over me in the moonlight, a darkly sexual fallen angel. His beautiful face was hard with lust as his eyes gleamed down at me. His arms strained with unappeased need, his torso chiseled by the tension in his muscles. “You keep sucking on my dick with that tight cunt of yours and you’ll make me come. Is that what you want, angel? You want me to fill you up before you take it all?”
“No!” I exhaled in a rush, willing my core to relax its eager tightening. He rolled his hips, stroking into me, his breath hissing as I took more of him.
“God, Eva. Your cunt loves my cock.”
Reaching for the headboard, Gideon stretched over me, my legs trapped between us. Fully exposed and tilted back for his pleasure, I was helpless to do more than watch as he straightened his hips and sank the last few inches of his penis into me.
The sound that left me was a harsh wail, the pleasure so intense it hurt. Distantly, I heard Gideon curse, felt his powerful body shudder.
“You good?” he bit out, his teeth grinding.
I tried to catch my breath, my lungs expanding as much as they were able.
“Eva.” He growled my name. “Are. You. Good?”
Unable to speak, I reached for his hips, my fingers catching in his boxer briefs. I had a moment to think how hot that was, that he hadn’t bothered to undress either one of us …
Then he started fucking, his hips pistoning in a relentless tempo, his long thick cock plunging and withdrawing from root to tip in rapid-fire thrusts. Supporting his weight entirely with his arms and the tips of his toes, he powered into me, his rigid penis nailing me straight into the mattress.
I came so hard my vision went black, my body seized with pleasure so intense I was locked in it, suspended in the powerful waves of erotic sensation.
I was inundated by the ferocious surge of my climax. My skin tingled from head to toe. Gideon paused on a downstroke, grinding into me, giving my body the steely length of his penis to grasp. My sex spasmed ecstatically around that delicious hardness, gripping him hungrily.
“Fuck,” Gideon bit out, “you’re milking my dick so hard.”
I shook violently, fighting to breathe.
The moment I sagged into the mattress, replete, Gideon pulled his cock out of my trembling slit and left the bed.
Bereft, I lifted a hand to him. “Where are you going?”
“Hang on.” He shoved his boxer briefs all the way off.
He was still hard, his cock rising high and proud, slick from my orgasm—but I wasn’t wet with his.
“You didn’t come.” I was too languid to help when he stripped me of my underwear. Sliding a hand beneath my back, he lifted me and whipped my shirt over my head.
His lips brushed over my brow. “You wanted fast and rough. I want slow and sweet.”
He levered over me again, this time settling into the cradle of my open arms and legs. The moment I felt his weight, his heat, his desire, I realized how much I wanted slow and sweet, too. The tears came then, finally, freed by the heat of his passion and the warmth of his love.
“You’re everything to me,” I cried, the words choked with tears.
“Eva.”
Shifting his hips, Gideon tucked the tip of his penis into my cleft and pushed forward gently, taking time and care to fill me. His lips moved against mine, the stroke of his tongue somehow more erotic than the slide of his cock.
“Hold me,” he whispered, his arms curved beneath my shoulders and his hands cupping the back of my head.
I tightened my grip on him. His buttocks flexed against my calves as he drove into me, his sweat slicking my palms as I caressed his back.
“I love you,” he murmured, his fingertips brushing my tears. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes.”
I watched the pleasure drift over his face as he moved within me.
I held him as he groaned, his body quivering in orgasm.
I kissed the tears away when he cried silently along with me.
And I let go of my grief in the shelter of his arms, knowing that whether in joy or pain, Gideon was one with me.
“I can’t get over this place.” Cary set his hands on the railing that surrounded the wraparound deck and looked out over the water. Sunglasses shielded his eyes while the wind played with his hair. “This house is awesome. I feel like we’re miles from anyone. And the view … un-fucking-believable.”
“Right?” I leaned my butt against the railing, facing the house. Through the wall of sliding glass doors, I watched the Reyes family swarm like bees around the kitchen and great room, with Gideon held captive by my grandmother and both of my aunts.
For me, the joyous mood was tinged with poignancy. My mother had never been a part of this extended group, and now she would never have a chance. But life went on.
Two of my younger cousins chased Lucky around the sofas, while the three older ones played video games with Chris. My uncle Tony and my dad were talking in the reading nook, while my dad bounced his fussy baby niece on his knee.
Gideon was a man who feared family in a way he feared little else, and his heartbreaker of a face reflected bemusement and dismay whenever he surveyed the chaos around him. Since I knew him well, I also saw the hint of panic in his eyes, but I couldn’t save him. My grandmother wasn’t letting him out of her sight.
Cary looked over to see what had drawn my attention. “I’m waiting for your man to sneak out and run like hell.”
I laughed. “That’s why I asked Chris to come, so Gideon could have some support.”
Our group—Gideon, me, Cary, my dad, and Chris—had arrived at the beach around ten in the morning.
It was a little after noon when my dad’s family was brought over from their hotel with groceries in tow, so that my grandmother could whip up her famous posole. She said it was known to soothe even the most wounded souls. Whether that was true or not, I knew firsthand that her rendition of the classic Mexican soupy stew was delicious.
“Chris is leaving him to fend for himself,” Cary drawled, “like you did.”
“What can I do? Oh my God.” I grinned. “My nana just handed him an apron.”
I’d been a little nervous when everyone showed up. I hadn’t spent much time with my dad’s family when I was little and had only made a couple trips out to Texas with him after I started at UCSD. Every time I visited with them, the Reyeses had been a bit reserved with me, which made me wonder if I looked too much like the woman they all knew had broken my dad’s heart. They had met my mother once and hadn’t approved, saying my dad was reaching too high and that his love for her wouldn’t end well.
So when my grandmother had marched right up to Gideon the moment she arrived and cupped his face in her hands, I’d held my breath right along with him.
My grandmother had brushed his hair back from his face, turned his head from side to side, and pronounced that she saw a lot of my father in him. Gideon had understood the Spanish and replied in her native tongue—he took her statement as a high compliment. My grandmother had been delighted. She’d been speaking to him in rapid-fire Spanish ever since.
“Trey called me yesterday,” Cary tossed out casually.
I looked at him. “Did he? How’d that go?”
“Did you say something to him, baby girl, to get him to reach out?”
Trying to look innocent, I asked, “Why would you think that?”
He shot me a knowing look, his mouth twisted wryly. “So you did.”
“I just told him you’re not going to wait around forever.”
“Yeah.” He tried looking innocent, too. I had to hope I pulled it off better than he did. “You know I’m not above taking a pity fuck, right? So thanks for hooking me up.”