Chapter Twenty-Nine

Back in Hermosa Beach the following Sunday, I still hadn’t heard from her. I refused to reach out first, especially knowing what I knew. If she didn’t care enough to at least call me to let me know what was going on, then I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of contacting her.

A flock of seagulls followed me as I walked along the beach near my loft. Kicking the sand, I wondered where my life would go from here, how I would spend my days without the focus on getting Aubrey back. More than anything, I wondered how I could possibly make myself forget her long enough to move on.

Picking a spot, I sat down and gazed out into the ocean. The water was rough. A brisk wind blew some sand into my eyes. A few surfers rode the choppy waves in the distance. A group of people were playing volleyball a few feet away. One of the girls ran over to me.

“Hey, we need another player. Want to join?”

Why the hell not? A distraction certainly couldn’t hurt. “Yeah. Alright.” Lifting my sluggish body off the ground, I joined a guy and a girl on one side of the net. Repeatedly serving the ball under arm, I kept my team in the lead for several games.

At one point, we took a break, and the only other guy player went to fetch some waters for us from the beach concession stand. When he returned, he was cracking up.

“Dude, you’re never gonna believe what I just saw.”

“What’s that, Mate?”

“There was a chick in line with a goat on a leash.”

I dropped the ball. “Say what?”

“A goddamn goat on a leash! This smoking hot chick, too. She wa—”

“Where?”

He pointed in the direction from which he came.

When I immediately took off, one of the girls yelled from behind me. “Hey, don’t leave! We’re starting another game.”

“Play without me,” I shouted without looking back.

My heart felt like it was beating unnaturally fast.

When I got to the concession stand, no one was in line. Looking around frantically, I wondered if it were possible that this were just a coincidence. A goat on a leash? No way. She was here.

Then, I saw her.

Aubrey.

My God.

She and Mutton were sitting alone on the sand. She was feeding him an ice cream cone as she looked out towards the water. The wind was blowing her hair around. She looked heart-stoppingly beautiful. Staring at her in disbelief, I stood there for the longest time without saying anything.

Somehow, he noticed me first. The “blind” goat suddenly bolted toward me, nearly knocking me down in the process.

Not knowing why the animal took off, Aubrey jumped up in a panic before she realized he was in my arms.

She stood up and brushed sand off of her pale yellow sundress. “Chance.”

“Princess. What are you doing here?”

“I’m parked at your house. You didn’t get my text?”

I took my phone out of my pocket and realized I had missed a text from her. It must have come in during the volleyball game. “No, but I see it now.”

Trying not to get overly excited, I reminded myself that she could very well have come here just to deliver the bad news in person. Despite my wanting to reach out and touch her, my body stiffened instead as a self-protective mechanism.

“Can we walk to your house? I don’t want to have this talk here.” She wasn’t smiling. Her expression was only confirming my worst fears.

A feeling of dread developed at the pit of my stomach. “Sure.”

The short walk to my place was quiet. When we arrived, Aubrey’s car was parked out front. We sat outside on the front steps to the loft. Mutton chewed on the grass next to us. She rubbed her palms together nervously.

“Go on, Aubrey. Just get it over with.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and her question caught me off guard. “Are you seeing someone?”

My tone was abrupt. “Am I seeing someone?”

“Just answer me.”

“No, Aubrey. I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep and breathe you for weeks.” My tone bordered on angry. “Why would you ask me that?”

“The other night, I returned to my house to get some things I forgot during the move. Philomena saw my car and came out to tell me that you had been there earlier in the day. So, I went to your motel that night. There was a car parked outside. When I peeked in the window, a girl was with you, and she was putting a shirt over her head. I think it was that bartender.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Are you kidding me?

Fuck.

“Princess, listen to me.” I placed my hand under her chin, directing her to look at me. “I promise you, I will never lie to you. Do you believe me?”

“Just tell me the truth.”

“That was Carla. She’s a friend. You’re right. She’s the bartender at the bar I frequented. She followed me back to my room because I drank too much that night. She took off her clothes and came on to me, but I stopped it. Nothing happened.”

“Really?”

“I swear on my Mum’s grave. Carla kissed me and started to undress me, but I told her I couldn’t do anything, nor did I want to.”

She let out a huge breath. “Oh my God. I’ve been losing sleep. I know I don’t even have a right to be upset after the way I’ve treated you.”

“My judgment was off that night. I was devastated after I found out you decided to go to Boston. It felt like my life was over.”

“Boston? I never decided to go to Boston.”

“What? But all of your stuff was gone.”

“Yes. I moved out…but not to go to Boston.”

“Philomena talked to Dick while you were packing. He told her you’d made up your mind to go with him.”

“No. That’s not true.”

“Fuck, Princess. That’s why I got so sloshed that night. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Richard was hopeful. Maybe that’s why he told Philomena I was moving with him. He kept thinking he could convince me, dangling the promise of a job and all. I hadn’t told him about you until the next day. I wanted to pack my stuff before things got ugly.”

“Wait. Are you telling me…”

“I never intended to go to Boston, Chance. My mind was basically made up a long time before that, but I was still scared to give in to you completely. The fear is always going to be there. I will always be afraid to lose you because of how much I love you. Spending that one day with you here, though, it felt so right. I’d never been more certain of anything in my life. I knew I had to go back and tie up my loose ends. I knew I had to end it with him.”

“You broke up with Dick?”

“Yes. It was a mess. I told him everything. He accused me of fucking you and your twin brother, Harry the landscaper.”

We both burst out into laughter, startling the goat who miraculously stayed conscious for once.

“If only I were two people and could double team you. Did you tell him I don’t really have a twin?”

“No. Once he accused me of being a slut, I didn’t care to clarify.”

“Dumbass.”

“He really was a good guy, but from the moment you came back, Chance, you need to know there was never really any contest.”

I let out a huge sigh of relief as my mind started to piece together what was happening. “You quit your job…not to go to Boston but to…”

“I wasn’t happy there anyway. Plus, if I were going to move to Hermosa Beach, I—”

“Move here?” A huge smile spread across my face. At that moment, I squinted my eyes to take a closer look at Aubrey’s Audi and noticed for the first time that it was packed to the rim with all of her crap just like the first week we met. Holy shit. We’d come full circle.

“All of your shit is in there?”

“Yes.” She placed her hand on my heart. “But I don’t need anything but this.”

Leaning in, I kissed her with everything in me and lifted her up into the air. People were driving by and honking.

When I put her down, she had tears in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around my neck. “I hope this complex allows goats.”

“If anyone gives us shit, we’ll just move. I’m thinking we need a house anyway where I can grow you another garden.”

My breathing quickened as the magnitude of everything started to hit me. I became overwhelmed with an animalistic urge to claim what I finally knew with absolute certainty was mine. I couldn’t wait a second longer to be inside of her. “Princess, hope you don’t have any plans for a while.”

She lifted her brow. “Why is that?”

“Because we have two years’ worth of fucking to do.”

I took Aubrey by the hand, and she followed me into the apartment as we practically stumbled through the door. Anticipating what was about to happen, my dick was excruciatingly hard.

I grabbed the biggest bowl I could find and filled it with water so that Pixy wouldn’t dehydrate in case we didn’t come out of our room for hours.

“Go to town, Bugger,” I said, placing the bowl in front of him. “That’s exactly what I intend to do on your mother.”

As she stood in front of me, it felt like a huge weight had lifted. It was the first time that I could truly be with Aubrey without apprehension and uncertainty.

I pulled at my hair as I stared down at her and shook my head. “I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much I want to do to you.”

“I’m ready for anything.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I think I need to fuck you hard then. Are you okay with that?”

She answered by pulling her sundress over her head. As she kicked her panties to the ground, I stripped out of my own clothes. The way she was staring at my body excited me even more. All of the restraint I exhibited over the past several weeks was completely non-existent now.

“Good God,” I breathed out as I got a look at her stark naked body in pure daylight. She’d shaved a thin line of hair down the middle of her beautiful mound. I so wanted to savor her, but not this time. That would be later. Right now, I needed her desperately.

I gripped the side of her waist and pulled her toward me. Within seconds, her legs were wrapped around me as I lifted her onto my starving cock.

“Aaagh,” I yelled out at how incredible it felt as I sunk deep inside of her. It felt better than anything I could remember before it.

We hadn’t even bothered to move from the same spot. Her back was against my bedroom door as I pounded into her relentlessly, breaking her in while she begged for it harder. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was with the woman I loved or because it had been so long, but never had a pussy wrapped around my cock ever felt tighter, hotter, wetter…more perfect or made for me in my entire life.

Gripping her ass tightly, within minutes, I felt her muscles spasm around me.

“Come, Aubrey. Come all over my dick, Princess. Let go.”

“Say my name when you come. I love when you say my name,” she whispered over my mouth.

As I came inside of her, I muttered her name repeatedly with each thrust of my hips. “Aubrey…Fuck…Aubrey…God…Aubrey…Aubrey…Aubrey.”

We stayed connected, leaning our foreheads together.

“I love you, Aubrey.”

“It was a long road to get here, but it was worth it,” she said.

“Worth every second.”

We stayed holding each other for a long time before I finally put her down. “You hungry?”

“A little.”

“Let’s get something in you…besides me. You’re gonna need the energy for round two.”

I threw my underwear on and placed my t-shirt over her head. I loved looking at her nipples peeking through my clothing. As she followed me into the kitchen, she placed her hand over her mouth in disbelief as reality set in. “Holy shit. I don’t have a job. I’ve never been unemployed before.”

“You’re in luck, Mrs. Bateman. I have an opening for a sex slave.”

“After what you just did to me in there, I would gladly volunteer for that position, Mr. Bateman.”

“We’ll find you a job here doing something you’re passionate about,” I said seriously.

“I’m passionate about you, and I’d like to do you over and over again.”

“Then, it’s settled. Sex slave it is.”

“But seriously, though, I don’t want to be dependent. I would literally be mooching off of your ass money.”

“Seeing as though I’ll be claiming your ass later, sounds like that’s only fair. An ass for an ass.”