His eyes hypnotize me.

ANNA HAS THE MOST delicious mouth. I kiss her, licking her lips, sucking the top one in my mouth, then the bottom one. I sweep my tongue inside, seeking out her tongue to play with mine. I can’t get enough of her.

A noise startles me and I pause, listening for the sound. “Did you hear that?” I ask Anna.

She laughs, her brown eyes twinkling at me. “Hear what?”

“It sounds like a baby crying.” I focus on the faint noise, but just as soon as I hear it, it goes away.

“No, silly. Why would you hear a baby crying? There’s no baby here.”

I nod, knowing she’s right, of course. After waiting a beat longer and hearing nothing, I relax and capture her lips once more.

“Mmm, I love your lips, sweets,” I murmur.

“I love you, Charlie, so much,” she tells me, sighing sweetly.

Then I hear it again, louder this time. It’s a baby crying for sure. I freeze and pull back. “You have to hear that.”

She looks up at me, confused. “I don’t hear anything.”

“I have to go find it.” This baby is upset, wailing. I don’t know anything about babies, but I know something must be wrong. I get up and leave Anna in her bed to search for the source of that horrible cry.

I exit her bedroom and go down the hall, pausing near each door to see if the cry gets louder or quieter, but it seems to be getting farther away. I open every door anyway, just to check. My heart is hammering in my chest, anxiety spiking over what could be wrong. I have to get to that baby.

The closer I get to Anna’s room, the louder it gets.

Huh, that’s weird. I started in Anna’s room, so I know there’s no baby in there.

But I step closer, and sure enough, the sound is louder.

Wails turn into screams and I feel full-on panic. I have to find this baby.

I open the door to Anna’s room and find a crib has been placed in the corner. A little baby is lying in it, arms and legs flailing wildly, screaming to get someone’s attention.

“Hey, shhhh, it’s okay little baby, I’m here now.” I talk to the infant as I approach it, hoping if it hears the sound of my voice it’ll know that help is on the way. I lean over the crib, peering down to see the smallest baby I’ve ever seen. He’s wrapped in a blue blanket, so I’m assuming it’s a boy. Red faced and sweaty, he continues to kick and squirm, helpless to do anything but lie there and cry.

I’ve never held a baby before, but how hard could it be? I reach into the crib to pick him up, but as I reach over the railing, the bed drops, putting the baby just out of my reach. I stretch my arms farther, but still, I can’t reach him.

What is going on?

I jostle the crib rail, unsure how to lower it. I squeeze every button and try to lift and lower it, but I can’t figure it out.

His screams are piercing my brain.

“Anna? Can you help me?”

She appears next to me, clicks a latch, and lowers the crib railing without a problem. She reaches down and scoops up the baby. He quiets instantly and my panic starts to subside. Thank God for Anna, she’ll know what to do.

“What do you think is wrong with him?” I ask her. She’s facing away from me, so I can’t see the baby anymore. She starts to move her arm around, jostling the baby, making him cry again.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I ask her, worried she might hurt the baby. Don’t newborn babies need you to support their head?

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll take care of it.”

All of a sudden, the cries stop, and the silence that follows is deafening. The panic comes back, clawing at my insides, squeezing my chest—what the fuck just happened? I have to hold that baby. I circle around to the front of Anna and freeze.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m so sorry, Charlie.” Anna says, frantic. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“No!” I shout. “What did you do?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“NO!”

 

A SCREAM YANKS ME out of sleep and I bolt up to a sitting position, worried there’s an intruder. Blinking rapidly, I search the room for a bad guy. It takes a couple seconds to clear the sleep from my brain, but as my vision comes into focus, I can tell no one else is in my bedroom except for me and Charlie.

“No, no, no, no. WHY?” Charlie shouts, the words being ripped from him, saturated in agony. His eyes are still closed, but his face contorts in pain. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he shakes his head back and forth.

“Charlie?” I touch his shoulder tentatively. Are you not supposed to wake someone up when they’re having a bad dream? I can never remember. He’s hot, covered in sweat, and his fingers clutch the sheets, trying to get a hold of something.

“How could you?” he whimpers, sounding utterly broken.

I lean over him and smooth his hair out of his forehead. “Shhh,” I whisper. “It’s okay, Charlie.”

He turns toward me and wraps his arms around my waist, burying his head in my chest. I think he’s still asleep as he hasn’t opened his eyes yet. I just wrap my arms around him and hold him tight. What on earth is he dreaming about?

“Anna,” he moans. It’s not a sexual moan; it’s a heartbreaking one.

Ah. He’s dreaming about the woman from the country club, Anna. Seeing her must have brought back some heck of a memory because this dream has him deep under.

“It’s Quinn. I’m here with you, Charlie. It’s okay,” I murmur in his ear.

“Oh, God,” he sobs, his whole body shaking. Is he crying?

My heart squeezes painfully at the thought of someone hurting this strong, sexy man in my arms. She must have done quite a number on him, and I hate her for whatever she did.

“Charlie, it’s okay. I have you,” I say, louder this time, wrapping my whole body around him. I need him to wake up, but I don’t know how to snap him out of this dream. I kiss his forehead, rubbing my hands up and down his back and arms.

He rolls us so he’s on top of me, but he’s still clinging to my body as if he’s drowning. I keep petting him, hoping my touch will wake him. I touch his face, startled to find his cheeks are wet. My lungs collapse at the realization that he really is crying. I wipe his tears away, their presence so wrong on the face of this man. Charlie is jokes and innuendo and inappropriate remarks. He isn’t a serious or sad kind of guy—he’s light and laughter, so full of life, so full of fun.

But right now, in my arms, this six-foot-tall, golden-haired man with ocean blue eyes and irresistible dimples is falling apart. He pants, trying to catch his breath. My eyes burn at the sight, my heart breaking for whatever he went through.

I kiss him again, my lips touching his warm skin wherever I can reach—his forehead, his hair, his temple. I shift, trying to reach more of his face. His breath, hot and humid, hits my skin with every shudder. I cradle him as he cries in his sleep, and I can’t stop the tears from overflowing. It’s stupid—I don’t know what I’m crying for—but Charlie is in pain, and somehow, his pain hurts me, too.

He gasps all of a sudden, jerking awake. Wild frantic eyes look all around and settle on me.

“Quinn?” he croaks, voice thick with emotion.

“I’m here, Charlie,” I reassure him.

“What happened?” he asks, looking so vulnerable I could cry all over again.

“You had a bad dream,” I tell him gently, continuing to pet and soothe him. He’s like a spooked wild animal, and I can’t bear the thought of him retreating. I need to make sure he’s okay.

He stares at me, his pulse hammering wildly in his neck, his heart pounding so hard I can feel it on my stomach where he’s lying on me. He takes a deep breath and settles back down, his head on my chest. We’re naked, having gone to sleep shortly after sex last night, and his sweat-slicked skin slides over mine. I run my fingers through his hair and wait to see if he will fall back asleep. We lie in silence, entwined together for a while. It could be five minutes or an hour, but I’m too wound up to fall back to sleep.

“You still awake?” he whispers.

“I am.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“You okay?” I ask.

He sighs. “That dream, it took me back in time. I can’t shake it.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it, but I’m a good listener if you want to get it off your chest,” I offer quietly.

He’s silent for so long, I assume he doesn’t want to talk about it. Then he sighs again and shifts us, pulling me over him so my head is pillowed on his chest this time. “It’s about that girl we saw at dinner, Anna,” he starts.

I stay quiet, letting him have the time he needs to say what he needs to say.

“She was my high school girlfriend. We dated freshman, sophomore, and most of junior year. We were each other’s firsts and we were so in love. We had our whole lives planned out. She wanted to be an obstetrician and we were going to get an apartment while she went to a pre-med college and I went to art school for photography. Then I’d support her while she finished med school and residency. We were going to have four kids and live happily ever after.”

Knowing the Charlie I know now, the one who hates relationships and has sex with many different women, I’m surprised to hear about this younger version of himself. How did he go from totally in love to who he is now?

“I was devoted to her. She was my best friend and I would have done anything to make her dreams come true, anything to make her happy.” He says the words with such sincerity that my heart hurts.

“What happened?” I have to ask.

“She got sick, told me she had the flu. So, I took care of her, brought her soup, missed assignments from school, the whole nine yards. I did anything I could think of to make her feel more comfortable. Then she had to go to the doctor because she didn’t get better, and I offered to take her, but she dodged me, telling me she was fine to go by herself. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, other than wishing I could have taken her because I wanted to be there for her, but I was busy with school, too, so I shrugged it off.

“But after her doctor’s appointment, she…changed, became withdrawn and sad. She couldn’t look me in the eye. I kept asking her what was wrong and she kept saying she was fine, but I knew she wasn’t. She stopped running track, stopped wearing makeup, started wearing baggy clothes instead of the pretty, girlie things she used to wear. Up until then we’d had sex all the time. We were 16 years old and inseparable, sneaking away every chance we could to find a place to be together, but then she just…wasn’t interested.

“Finally, I confronted her. I was worried sick and threatened to involve her parents if she wouldn’t tell me what was going on.” His muscles tense and his tone becomes incensed.

My stomach hurts at the thought of what he’s going to tell me, and I wrap my arms around his waist for comfort.

“It turns out that when she supposedly had the flu, she wasn’t sick at all. She was pregnant,” he spits.

Oh, Charlie. I squeeze him, distressed by what he had to go through. The words echo in my head and I can’t think of anything to say. He used past tense, so I’m assuming she didn’t stay pregnant. Did she have a miscarriage? An abortion? Either way, my heart squeezes at the devastation of losing a baby at such a young age. I wait patiently for him to continue.

“I don’t even know how it happened. I used a condom every single time. In fact, I’ve never once had sex without a condom.” He laughs and it’s a brittle sound. “So, while I was buying her soup and taking care of her, she was pregnant. While I was rubbing her back as she vomited and asking if there was anything I could do for her, she was carrying my baby, and she never once mentioned it. We told each other everything—or at least I did—every mundane thought, every hope, every dream, everything. How could she not tell me? I go over it again and again and it makes no sense. We wanted kids, we even picked names out for them, for crying out loud.” He’s pissed now, his voice getting louder and louder with outrage. I’m outraged on his behalf.

“And when she went to the doctor, it was to have an abortion.” He chokes on the last word, swallowing thickly. I feel his chest cave in as he struggles to control his emotions, and my eyes burn with tears for him.

“Now, I believe in the woman’s right to choose, but what about the father? What happened to my choice? Didn’t I deserve to even know about it?” He’s definitely crying now, his voice guttural and broken. There’s no stopping my tears from overflowing at the sound of his anguish. I’m trying to picture Charlie at 16, hearing that his girlfriend aborted their baby without telling him.

“The thing is, I don’t know what my choice would have been. Maybe I would have agreed with her. We were way too young to be parents. We had all these goals, and having a baby definitely would have put a kink in them.

“But maybe I wouldn’t have cared if the timing was off. There was nothing I wanted more than to have a family with her. I could have gone to school first then stayed home with the baby while she went to school, or I could have changed aspirations, gotten a different job right out of high school. I don’t know, we could have figured something out, but she lied to me. She had the abortion without giving me a chance to weigh in on the subject. I didn’t even know about it until two months later. Two entire fucking months, she saw me every day and never told me. I hate her for what she did.”

So do I, I think. Though she was in a difficult position, I can’t believe she didn’t tell him.

“After that, I started having dreams about babies. I dream that I hear a baby crying, but I can’t find him, or I can find the baby, but he’s just out of my reach. Or he’s about to fall out of an open window, and I can’t get there in time to save him, so I have to watch him plummet to his death. If I’m especially lucky, Anna is there and kills the baby. They’re all different variations of the same thing: my baby needs me, but I’m too late to save him.”

Oh, Charlie. How horrifying. I can’t imagine those dreams; my stomach churns just thinking about it.

“I’m so sorry, Charlie.” Lifting my head up, I look at his face, so serious and sad in the darkness. He shrugs and looks away, not sure what to say.

I’m not quite sure what to say either, but I want to comfort him. I throw my leg over his waist and straddle him. His hands land on my waist, but his grip is tentative; I’m not sure if he’s going to push me off or hold me close. Leaning forward, I kiss his lips gently. He doesn’t kiss me back, but he doesn’t push me away either. I decide to push my luck.

“I’m so sorry she hurt you,” I murmur then kiss his cheek. “I’m so sorry you never had a choice.” I kiss his other cheek, and then his forehead. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I tell him. I feel it more than he could imagine. Gingerly wiping his tears away, I kiss his lips again. My kisses aren’t sexual; they’re sweet, affectionate. I want to take his pain away. He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes heavily, chest rapidly rising and falling.

His fingers tighten on my skin and his muscles tense—his thighs, his abs, up to his chest and arms. He’s liked a caged animal, torn between flight and fight. He still hasn’t kissed me back but our lips are connected, breathing into each other’s mouth.

I place my hand on his chest, right over his heart. “It’s not your fault, Charlie. You know that, right? It’s not your fault.”

Tortured blue orbs meet mine. “Quinn.” The use of my actual name as opposed to his nickname for me is a warning.

“You are a good man. I know you are. You need to forgive yourself for something you didn’t do.”

He shudders. “I don’t know how.”

“Have you ever told anyone about this?” I ask gently. I suspect he’s bottled it all up inside.

He confirms my suspicion with a shake of the head.

“Not even Max or Logan?”

He shakes his head again.

“Maybe you should. Maybe it might help to grieve properly for what you lost. Let your friends lighten the load you carry.”

“I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” he admits, looking at me warily.

“It’s okay, Charlie. I won’t ever tell a soul,” I promise him. “This is your story, but thank you for sharing it with me.” I kiss him softly again.

This time, he kisses me back. His strong arms wrap solidly around my upper body, crushing me to him, and he pours his pain into his kiss. I gladly accept, wrapping my arms around him. The kiss is angry and desperate at first, him eating at my mouth and me letting him. He flips us over so he’s on top of me, and I cradle him with my body. Minutes pass and he gentles, kissing me languidly with slow licks and deep breaths.

We roll again, our bodies entwined, and I try not to get turned on. I want to keep sex out of this moment of comfort. Nothing about this situation is sexy. My heart is bruised from the story he’s told me, and my mind is on the past and the pain of losing a child.

But we’re naked.

And kissing.

Our bodies rub together, creating a delicious friction in between my legs.

I ignore it, determined to let him seek comfort from me. This is not about you, I remind myself. My nipples harden, screaming for attention. My pussy is so wet, I swear I can smell the faint musk of my arousal in the air. My heart rate escalates, but I keep my kisses slow and gentle.

Another roll puts him on top of me again, and I feel his cock as we move. It’s hard and hot, a steel brand on the inside of my thigh. Oh, fuck.

Ignore it. This is not about sex. This is about comfort.

My pelvis tilts up without my permission, seeking out his erection, drawn to it like a moth to a flame. He shifts slightly and all of a sudden, it’s right in between my legs, his length resting on top of my slippery slit. I wrap my legs around him, holding him in place. His cock throbs, and I can’t stop my hips from moving, sliding up ever so slightly, then down. The small amount of friction is bliss.

Charlie groans, a deep, masculine rumble, and his hips start to shift with me, sliding his cock through my wetness. His piercing rubs my clit and my breath catches at the sensation.

“Quinn,” he murmurs into my mouth.

“Charlie,” I say with a sigh.

The next shift of his hips brings his cock farther back, and the forward thrust causes it to notch right into the entrance of my pussy. He freezes, realizing that any more forward movement will result with him inside of me. He isn’t wearing a condom, something he is always so careful about. Now I know why he’s so careful, but I’m clean; I get tested routinely and I know he does too, as we share our test results every time. As for birth control, he’s safe from pregnancy with me.

“Quinn?” Lust-filled eyes meet mine, searching for my answer.

I hold his gaze and nod my consent.

I haven’t had sex without a condom in a very long time, not since I was married, and I forgot how much more you can feel without that thin barrier. Charlie pushes in agonizingly slowly, looking into my eyes the entire time. I watch his face, rapt, as his expression changes from lust to wonder. This is the first time he’s ever had sex without a condom, and I realize he’s placing an awful lot of trust in me right now. He’s trusting me to be clean and to be safe.

It’s humbling, his trust.

When he’s finally buried inside, he stills, his eyes closing for a brief second of bliss. A beat later, he opens them and watches me as he pumps in and out of me, torturously slowly, dragging his piercing along the sensitive walls of my pussy. His eyes hypnotize me. I’m entranced, unable to look away, and I see every bit of pleasure wash over his face, every bit of emotion.

He doesn’t say a word, not one dirty command, not one filthy request. He just stares into my eyes as he feels me from the inside.

My orgasm is a surprise, stealing my breath as blinding pleasure crashes into me. I clench around his erection rhythmically and he grunts at the feel of it, watching me fall apart as if it’s the most amazing sight he’s ever seen. When I can open my eyes again, I hold his gaze and push on his chest, telling him I want to be on top. He sinks deep, rolling us without separating our bodies.

Then I ride him, continuing his slow, languid pace. The angle hits a new spot deep within me and though I wasn’t expecting to come again, a second orgasm is approaching. I ignore it, focusing only on making Charlie feel as good as he just made me feel. Soon, though, the pleasure becomes too much and I lose my coordination. I lean down, laying my chest on top of his, and kiss him, conveying how amazing this is with my lips and tongue. I try to keep moving, but he senses my difficulty, grabs hold of my hips, and takes over, thrusting up into me.

The movements are so slow that I can feel his orgasm approach. His cock swells, his strokes stutter, and he grunts, burying himself as deep as he can while he fills me up with his cum. The pulsations of his cock push me over the edge and I follow him into bliss.

My orgasm paralyzes me and I sink on top of him, resting my head on his skin as we catch our breath. I can feel his heart thump against my chest. Once I feel like I can move again, I attempt to get off of him, but he wraps his arms around me, keeping me draped over his body, so I settle back down.

My eyelids suddenly weigh a thousand pounds. I close them and try to stop myself from yawning, but it’s no use. I drift off to sleep, surrounded by Charlie’s warm embrace, his cock still inside me. This time it’s my past that haunts me when we fall asleep.