How am I supposed to breathe with Jacques Cain freaking staring at me? How am I supposed to listen when people talk? How am I supposed to fucking function when he’s constantly burning holes in me from across the room!?
I can hardly think straight after his spiel.
“I’m fucking proud of you, you know it?”
No. I didn’t know it. Nor did I need to for the rest of my damn life. I don’t need him to be proud of me! What does he think? That I’ve been raising our child for him? He’s lost his ever-loving mind.
“...find a moment. I know you can, and I know you will. I know you need this as much as I do...if not for closure, then something fucking else. Besides, you and I both know this conversation is nowhere near over.”
Find a moment. I damn near roll my eyes while singing “Happy Birthday” to my daughter.
“Happy birthday, dear Apple. Happy birthday to you…”
After we finish singing, cheers and clapping ensue, startling my little bit in my arms. After chuckling at her, I brush my lips across her forehead, smiling at my mother beside me. Cooing my daughter and trying to set her back at ease.
“Shh. It’s okay, baby girl. They just love singing to you. That’s all.” I laugh around my words.
And I am embarrassed to say that I immediately glance near the terrace door, by the corner Jacques just had me hemmed up in. I don’t know why, but when I don’t see him, my heart, for reasons I refuse to look too hard at, squeezes tightly in my chest.
“Presents now, sweetie?” my mom asks, holding her hands out for Apple.
When my daughter yawns as she lays her head on my shoulder, I shake my head.
“Nah,” I say. “I figured we would have to get a nap in. Now is as good a time as any.” I shrug. before shifting my daughter’s weight.
Out of nowhere, Beau steps around Phil and my mother, his hands out for Apple too.
“Here. Let me. I’ll take her.”
After I shake my head and excuse myself and my daughter, I smile at Beau. “I really would feel better if I laid her down. She may need to be changed. But thank you though.”
Then I go upstairs and lay my daughter down for a mid-birthday party nap.
After laying Apple down, I sit on the edge of her bed and begin brushing her hair away from her face. I hum one of her favorite songs, and she’s almost asleep when she jerks back awake and asks for prayers. The same prayers I prayed over and over as a child.
“Your bedtime prayers, Apple?” I furrow my eyebrows when she nods her head. “Now, I lay me down to sleep? Okay,” I tell her.
And it doesn’t take long. We get through it pretty quickly. Well, she mostly mutters her way through it. And, once I’ve kissed her sweet cheek, I turn her bedside table lamp off.
“Sweet dreams, baby girl.”
“Tweet dreams, Maman.” She yawns before rolling over, and I quietly close the door.
I’m a nervous wreck by the time I head back down stairs. It actually takes my hand three punches to hit the button for the ground floor. I check my reflection in the elevator mirror doors, wondering why Jacques even came. Why after all this damn time? I brush my hands over my unruly curls, trying tuck a few stray ones back into the messy bun my hair is pinned up into. Then I press my lips together and stare back at my reflection. My mind’s still running a hundred miles a damn minute…
What if he already left? What if he came, I was a bitch, and that costs my daughter a relationship with her dad? What if—
The elevator jars to a stop a little sooner than I anticipated it to, and I step farther back in the elevator. I pull my shoulders back and fit a smile back on my face as someone enters the elevator.
And whatever pose of poise I was going for is completely fucking lost the moment my eyes land on Jacques.
“Hey, Vagabond. Just the one I wanted to see.” He winks, and a split second later, both of his hands are circling mine and I’m being pulled from the safety of the elevator car.
“Wait. No. Where—” I yank a good five times, but his grip is like a damn unbreakable vise. “Stop! Or, shit, unhand me. What are you, a barbarian?” I growl, preparing to yank one very fucking good last time, but the next thing I know, his weight is redistributed and my back is connecting with the hard oak of one of my father’s suite doors.
“No. I’m done waiting,” he growls into my ear. “I thought I made that perfectly clear.” He pins my wrists behind my back, and then the door opens behind me. “And I do got a fuck-ton of business here today, as previously mentioned. And not only with our daughter, but also with you, missy. No matter what you’ve told yourself. Actually”—he hoists me up and into the room when I don’t allow him to usher me in with his hands on the small of my back—“I’d like to start the first of that business right now. My business with you.”
“Stop manhandling me, Jacques! What the hell?” I growl, swinging my arms and trying to shove him away and find some leverage, but it’s useless. Any and all of my pathetic protests are wasted against his strength. “Okay!” I yell with all of my might and step as close to his ear as I can up on my tiptoes.
Then he shuffles me into the room and closes the door behind us.
The fuck? Is this headed towards rape? What’s he doing? Does he really think I’m just gonna allow him to push me around?
“What are you doing?! Jacques!” My voice echoes between us in the dark room as I seek out his eyes through the shadows. I’m somewhat disoriented from going from the bright corridor of the hall to the pitch-dark room. When my eyes are finally able to compensate, I try to take in my surroundings, but Jacques keeps advancing on me, making it a bit hard.
Much like all the master suites on each of my father’s hotel floors, this one also is themed. And it has a broad marble foyer that houses a good sized mahogany table with a centerpiece usually proudly displaying the finest blooms New Orleans has to offer that time of year.
So, when the backs of my legs meet a blunt edge, I assume it’s the table he has me cornered against. And, when his massive frame leans over my petite one, bowing my back, and there’s a crashing sound just before my bare back meets with the cold wood of the table, I know that my assumptions were spot-on.
It is the table he has my upper body caged to.
“Jacques, please. If you want to talk, then fine. We’ll—”
BAM.
That’s all I really have. That singular word to describe the very next moment…
Okay, BAM. STARS. FIREWORKS. Christmas lights! All of them light and twinkle behind my eyelids as a moan escapes my throat the moment Jacques fucking Cain’s mouth slants across mine. I can’t even recall what I was trying to say to him. Not that it matters! I don’t even remember why I was pissed or, hell, where I am as his tongue wages a war with mine. His teeth cut into my lip before it’s eagerly sucked into his mouth.
“No more talking,” he mutters as his mouth assaults mine.
A moment later, one of the hands cradling my face slides down the front of my body and roughly jerks at the stretchy material of my dress.
“No more fucking thinking.” He moans his words out as he shoves his erection harder against my core.
My legs helplessly fall to the outside of his. And his moans easily elicit one of my own—but I’m past caring. I can’t help it. I never have been able to. Not with him. Not with this man.
His navy gaze pierces mine as his hand settles at the nape of my neck before he pulls my mouth back up to his. I feel the cold air hit my bare legs as his other hand continues yanking my skirt up.
“You think I don’t feel your body responding to mine?” he growls around roughly kissing me from ear to ear then shoulder to shoulder. His beard abrades all the flesh in its wake. “You think I don’t know you fucking need this as much as I do? You’re wrong, Vagabond. You’re so goddamn wrong.” He pulls his face back, and his grip on my neck tightens, but I close my eyes, refusing to open them.
Not when he’s being this real. Not with the words he keeps letting fall out of his mouth. I can’t take it. I’m no fool. So, instead, I just quietly lie there, my eyes closed as I try like hell to calm my breathing down as our breath mixes between us.
After a few quiet moments, he settles his forehead against mine. And even though it feels like his body is pulling away from mine, leaving me feeling cold, it’s only a brief feeling of abandonment before an entirely different brand of something I only feel with him floods my veins.
His hand settles between my legs before he rubs harder against my core. “This still mine?” he grunts through pursed lips as his hand fully cups my bareness.
And I can’t help it. When my eyes finally fly open, they lock onto his immediately.
Without thinking, I nod, answering him as honestly as I can. “Y-yes. Always.” And I don’t know why, but I have to shake my head and try really hard to blink tears away.
Thankfully, this guy has always been ready with the perfect distraction.
A split second later, when Jacques leans back to tear his T-shirt over his head, he pins his weight between us so his hard cock is still shoved against my core. and I glance down where we meet. I slowly scan every inch of beautiful, inked flesh that’s been embedded into my brain since the last time my starved eyes got the chance to peek at him. And I can hardly pull my gaze back up to his. At least not until his husky voice rings out through the darkness, calling out my name.
“Eve, I’ve wanted... No. I’ve needed to worship at this altar longer than I’d like to elaborate at the moment. And, now that I’m here, all I fucking know is thank God I’m home. Thank fucking God I’m finally home, Pipsqueak.”
The stretchy material should be a little more difficult than it is to tear away, but I guess, if that’s what’s standing between Jacques and what he wants, it wouldn’t have taken much no matter what it was.
The instant his mouth lands on mine again, his warm front crashes against my body, meeting mine so we’re skin to skin. Whatever calm breath I’d accumulated in my lungs with my eyes closed is lost, and I don’t know if it’ll ever be found again. The sound of the table scooting across the marble floor a few feet back ricochets off the walls, and a few seconds later, Jacques’s weight is still centered so his rigid erection can continue stroking against my wetness. And, when the table jars to a stop as it hits a wall, I seriously wonder if that’s all it’ll take for me to crest over the orgasm I’ve been on the brink of since looking down at where we’re joined. It’s been that damn long.
Then his voice snatches my attention back just as his body begins moving against mine. He keeps our eyes locked as he speaks.
“Brown eyes stay on mine, Pipsqueak. The whole time.” He scans down my completely exposed body as he pulls away again.
Then his huge hands circle my wrists before raising them over my head, and when his eyes finally reach mine, they lock there. Then he pins my hands, placing my palms on the wall above my head, and makes more demands.
“Hands here. If you move them...I’mma pull away. I’ll stop whatever I’m doing. And whatever I’m in the middle of or however deep I’m in the middle of it. You move your hands, Vagabond, I stop and pull away. Is that understood?”
He slowly leans the upper half of his huge body over mine, bowing his back over my frame. And in case you are wondering, No. I can’t. I can’t focus. I can’t concentrate on his words. I can’t even control my thoughts! Much less simply direct them.
I don’t even know when I started. I only realize there’s a motion. There’s a sync, a rhythm to us. To our moving bodies. And I’ve never felt so fucking damn in tune with another human being on this planet. Not like this.
But it’s not like I have to tell you that. You’ve been here, haven’t you? All the way from the beginning…
“You better answer me.”
When the hair on the fronts of his thighs brushes against the backs of my own thighs, I shudder. And then, moments later, when his bare cock slowly slides through my drenched core, I decide it’s time for me to let go. I decide there’s no necessary reason for me to remain so vigilant with my virtue and modesty. There’s a beauty in letting go, and I damn near smile at the thought of becoming Jacques Cain’s whore. Just so long he doesn’t stop worshipping me. All of me. With his words and his mouth and his hands.
“Jacques, I won’t move. Or look away from you.” My eyes seek out his as I whisper the words around the lump lodged in my throat. But he won’t look back at me. “I’m here, okay? You have my attention. I’m here.”
I want to nuzzle him. I want to kiss him. Hell, I just need him touching me. Any part of me. Skin to skin. Or simply him to look at me! But his eyes won’t meet mine. They just keep scanning every square inch of my exposed flesh like he’s fucking hungry.
“Please. If you don’t do something. I need—” The words impulsively fall out around my ragged breathing, and I swear, if he doesn’t put me out of my misery, I’m gonna scream soon. “Jacques,” I whine, unabashedly bucking harder beneath him. Trying to gain leverage with the heels of my shoes as they dig into his lower back. I’m attempting to rock against his erection, find the rhythm we had just a second ago, before he broke it. “Please, Jacques.” Warm tears pool in the corners of my eyes, but any shame I would have—should have—is drowned and killed the moment his mouth roughly attacks mine.
“This? This what you want?” He thrusts his cock harder against my wet bareness until I’m just a breath away from the edge of climaxing, and then he abruptly stops all movement. “Or is it this? Is this how you like to be fucked, Vagabond? Just the tip, baby?” The thick head of his cock throbs as it barely slips inside my pulsing core, then pulls out. “You know you’re the only one...I’ve ever been with without anything between—” He coughs and clears his throat. Then he nudges the side of my face with his cheek before bringing his face back to mine and looking back and forth between my eyes. “I didn’t know, Eve. I didn’t know so much. I couldn’t remember. Honestly, I may have been too afraid to. I knew you were vital. I knew how crucial you were—not only to me, but to my story. My whole story. Hey…”
He nips my earlobe before softly brushing his lips across my cheek and kissing a few stray tears that’ve leaked out. “I can’t fight this. Not anymore. I fucking wanted to, too. And I know you’ve been here, fighting just as damn hard as I have—but...aren’t you tired? Don’t you ever get tired of fighting too, Vagabond?” He lets out a sigh as he begins scaling down the front of my exposed body. His hands skim the tops of my breasts as his mouth assaults the flesh between my neck.
And I couldn’t care less. “I’m fucking exhausted, Jacques,” I simply respond, rolling my eyes back into my head and finally allowing myself to truly feel what it feels like to be loved and worshipped as a woman by the only man she’s ever wanted in her whole entire simple little life.
Jacques—
If you could see her, then I could explain this shit better. The words escape me. And the ones that don’t escape me make no damn sense. But so does everything else I never even knew I was really at risk of losing. However, now—now that I have her, now that I remember having her in the first place—there’s no fucking going back. Not now. No way in hell. And the faster she learns that, the better off we’ll fucking be.
I knew that coming down here was gonna make shit different. I knew it on the ride down. I could feel the change in the air. And no, it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the change in the season. But it did have everything to do with the fact that every mile marker I passed was another mile closer to something that’d been missing. And I’d never known all this time until I started heading towards her and our daughter…
I wouldn’t let myself think about what was living outside the walls of my MC. About what was moving on without me. And it’s all I’ve done from sunup to sundown. All that has kept me going, the only thing that’s consumed me and woken me up the next goddamn morning, is the fact that Eve’s been safe. Our daughter’s been safe. And, now that the club is stronger, all I have to do is hunt down my last living relative, Bentley Cain, kill that motherfucker, and finish rebuilding my MC. I’m going a different direction this time than my pops ever did. Especially after my ma passed.
But, soon—hopefully really fucking soon too—the club my father and his father helped build will once again be what it was before Ma passed away from cancer. Those two motherfucking things are the ONLY things that have kept me going and moving forward day in and day out. Instead of riding straight to the nearest ramp to I-78 and heading directly to New Orleans, where the rest of me lived on, I had to get my shit straight. My life straight. I had to square up my club. Then I could think about building on top of it.
You want to know what images haunted me every night before I went to sleep? And, by every, I mean every single motherfucking night Dreads’ texts of Eve in bed after she and Apple had first fallen asleep came in.
Just that. The image of the mother and child peacefully sleeping in her pops’ hotel every night.
But it was the only reassurance that would work. It was the only way I could keep my ass glued to the club and to NYC instead coming down here and claiming what was mine as memory after memory of Eve Of’May O’Malley came flooding back over the last year.
It took a lot of migraines. And a fuck-ton of patience.
But now…
I skim over her tanned, naked flesh in the wake my hands’ path from her delicate neck down her chest and over her nipples until they span the expanse of her rib cage and hold her still.
“I remember...fucking everything. I remember,” I grunt, and when my hands circle her hips, I finally pull her fully down onto my cock. I sigh at the feeling of sinking into heaven a little sooner than either of us anticipated. “Jesus. Christ,” I grit out. Fucking barely. “The goddamn memory doesn’t do it justice, Vagabond. The goddamn memory does NOT—”
“There’s only been you. There’s only ever been you, Jacques.”
I don’t know if it’s because of her words or the goddamn tears sliding down her beautiful cheeks from the corner of her eyes before she turns her face away from me, but I lose the fucking breath in my lungs. It’s gone. Just gone.
And I mean I knew...but I didn’t know, you know?
“There’s only been…” My mimicking words trail off and I still my motions. Completely.
I don’t slam forward like my mindless cock is fucking begging me to. I don’t grip the fuck out of her hips and fuck her like the caged animal that’s lurking just beneath the surface of my skin. No, I go perfectly still, making every damn muscle from my neck to my thighs tense in hushed preparation. For what? Hell if I fucking know. Her next words, maybe?
Say something, Pipsqueak! Say something, I silently plead.
When her teary, dark-brown eyes come back up and settle on mine in the small dark room, everything—even my broken piece-of-shit heart—stills in its cage.
“There’s only ever been you,” she says. “And when you come back into my life...every time, I don’t want you to ever leave...and I have to hate you ’cause I know you will in the end. ’Cause that’s what you do. You once called me your ‘goodbye girl.’ Do you remember that, Jacques? You say you remember...but do you? Remember it all? Can you remember that?”
She’s no longer ashamed of the tears streaming down her face. It’s as if she’s accepted them. Or she’s accepting something in this moment between us, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s the flat tone of her heart-wrenching words... I can’t explain it. But I understand it. If that makes any goddamn sense.
Without breaking eye contact with her, I respond as truthfully as I can. “Yes. But then, later, I told you you weren’t. The night I came and got you because you wouldn’t get your ass on the plane. Remember? I came for you, didn’t I?” I slowly pull my cock almost completely out of her warm pussy, and I swear to God I can’t do it any faster even if someone were to point a nine millimeter at my skull. I grit my teeth and spit out more nonsense. “I keep coming back to you for a reason, Vagabond. And fuck if I know what that reason is, but I believe it’s time we explore that shit, yeah?” I slam back into her. All the way to the fucking hilt. “Goddamn it, Eve O’Malley. This is mine. And it always will be. I don’t give a fuck what you say.”
Her cunt grips down almost instantly. And hell yeah, I have to bite my tongue to keep from busting a nut.
“Then take it. If it’s yours, take it. That’s all I’ve ever been trying to say, Jacques Cain. I’m yours if you want me...”
And when I glance back down at her, I smirk and then slowly pull out and surge back forward.
“You’re goddamn right you are, Pipsqueak.”
Her pussy clenches around my cock, and I can’t help the small chuckle that spills from my lips.
“God, your pussy feels so fucking good. Shit, baby.”
I can’t go any slower with her. She’s as small as, if not smaller than, I remember, and I can’t fucking go any damn slower or I’ll lose it right here. But, then again, I question the intelligence of going any faster in the same moment.
“This is mine,” I grunt, slowly increasing speed of my thrusts. “Always?” I grit out completely unintentionally yet with every intent in the world. “Say it, Eve. Say it’ll always be mine and mine alone.”
Our bodies find their rightful sync, and though she’s tight, it does fit, all ten inches—thank fuck.
And, finally, I’m where I know I’m supposed to be. Finally, I know the difference between searching for home and finding home. I’m damn near biting holes in my cheeks with every tooth in my head when she finally responds and the tension releases.
“Always. And only ever yours,” she mutters as her head rolls back. “Only ever fucking yours.”
The sound of her guttural words causes my nails to bite into her hips, and my grip becomes so demanding that I should worry about bruising her. But I can’t. Because the moment the tip of my cock brushes the deepest recesses of her womb and her hands pull my face down to hers before swallowing my moans and grunts with hers, I simply lose it. I come harder than I’ve ever come in my whole life. Eve Of’May O’Malley included.
I release her hips before framing her face and sinking my fingers into her hair. I look as deep into her muddy brown eyes as I can. I search and search until I see it. Her, the little girl from my past with the bedtime prayer and the dark-brown eyes. The little girl begging me for my ma’s crucifix.
And once I’ve gathered my breath, I tell her exactly what I’ve always wanted her to know—what I’ve always wanted to fucking tell her but I’ve put off for some reason or another.
“Goddammit, I love you, Eve O’Malley. I’m not doing this shit no more. Not without you. I don’t give a shit what you say, yeah?”
Her pussy convulses around my cock and our cum seeps out around it when she laughs. I duck my head into the crook of her neck before slipping out and cuddling her close to me. Once I have her cradled to my chest, I brush my lips across her forehead and wait until we’ve caught our breath. Then I ask if she’s up for a shower. Without much thought after, I stand and scoop her up before carrying my little Vagabond towards the bathroom with full intentions of getting her even wetter and a whole helluva lot hotter.
Insert cocky wink and grin here. Baby, you know this story. You’ve been here. And you damn well know my name…You know how this one’s gonna end.