CHAPTER 17
I woke up feeling the most delicious soreness between my legs and an ache in muscles haven’t been used in years. Stretching out, I reach over expecting to find Axel’s warm body next to mine but only meet cold sheets.
I open my eyes and look around the room. Empty. Climbing out, I pick up the shirt from last night, pull on a pair of yoga pants from my bag, and continue my search for Axel. The bathroom is empty and so is every room I check after. Not in the kitchen, not in the garage, but his truck is still out front.
I’m standing on the back porch, looking off across the lake at the sun just barely peeking over the tips of the trees. The lake is calm in the early morning hours, and the world seems to be asleep. I am about to give up my search when I see a slight movement down at the end of the dock. The path to his dock is covered slightly by a line of trees, and in the early morning hours, I am worried my eyes might be playing tricks on me. When I see the movement again, I realize I have just found him.
Tiny pinpricks shoot through my feet when I hit the cold pebbled walkway on the way down to the docks. I keep my eyes on his naked back. He is sitting at the very end of the dock, his legs are folded up, and his arms are resting against his knees. It isn’t until I get a little closer that I realize his head is resting against his arms and his back is heaving with deep breaths. He has to have felt my footsteps against the wood of the dock, but if he did, he didn’t change his posture.
“Ax?” I ask softly.
No response.
“Baby?” I try again.
Nothing.
Sighing deeply, I sit down and bring my body close to his. My legs fall open and the cold skin of his back hits my front. He must be frozen.
“Jesus, Axel, how long have you been out here?”
Nothing.
“Ax, baby, please. You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
He’s silent for a while. His body jerks slightly, giving away his silence for anything but what it is. My big strong man is breaking. I knew he was holding his pain tight last night, trying to be strong for me. Trying to keep his torment from showing.
I bring my arms around and lace my fingers together against his chest, his heart beating rapidly against my arm. His body stills when I place my lips against his back and whisper the only thing I can think of. “It’s okay, Ax. You can’t hold this in. For years I have and it doesn’t help.” Then I fall silent and hold him tight, hoping he opens up to me.
“It’s my fault,” he finally says, his voice thick with emotion.
“What? What is?” I question.
“Everything.”
We fall silent again while I puzzle over his response. We were both victims here in fate’s cruel game of keep-away. I don’t understand how he can even begin to blame himself.
“Baby, you have to give me more than that. There is no way any of this is your fault,” I plead.
He straightens his body but doesn’t make the move to turn. Letting his legs fall to dangle from the end of the wooden path, he turns his head and looks over at the sun rising slowly above the tree line. He brings his arms up from their relaxed position at his sides and closes them over mine before pulling my arms away from his chest and clasping our hands together on his lap.
“The first thing I did when I left June and Donnie’s was report them to child services. Between the conditions they forced us to live in, the food they refused us, and Donnie’s creepy behavior with the little girls, there was plenty to shut them down. They lost every child the state was paying for. It’s no fucking wonder she slammed the door in my face when I went on my search for you.” He lets out a humorless laugh before continuing. “I wouldn’t have even bothered, Izzy . . . but I was fucking desperate to find you.”
“She opened the door, and when she saw it was me, the bitch spit in my fucking face. I didn’t even get a word out. She did manage to tell me about your parents. I will spare you the details on that, but I got nothing else. She must have loved knowing she had the key to my finding you, the key to keeping me from you.”
When I feel wetness fall on the arm resting on his lap, I lift my cheek from his back and look up at the cloudless sky before realizing it was coming from him. My heart is breaking just a little more from knowing just how deep his agony is rooted.
“I never got your letters, Izzy. You know . . . You fucking know I would have come running. Not a single one. I wasn’t at base long. I can’t give you much but they scooped me up quick and I had to leave. Top-secret shit and I went dark, baby. I wrote you a letter that explained it all, but the timing of your parents . . . It makes sense you never got it. I had no fucking clue you were writing, trying to find me.” He shakes his head as if that simple move can purge the bitterness of his memories.
“Baby . . .” I don’t know what to say.
He squeezes my hands and lets me know that he needs this. He needs to get this out. “Fucking killing me, Izzy . . . to know that I was so close to you but so fucking far. Knowing that you and our . . . baby . . .” He pauses on a sob that catches his words, “Our baby, God, our baby . . . That baby would have been the most perfect child ever born.” His big body folds over and he starts crying in earnest. Tears of my own are falling down my face and onto his back, but I just hold him tighter.
I give him the time he needs to get it out, holding him tight and whispering words of love against his back.
We sit there for a while. He lets out his anguish and I hold him, offering what strength I can. The sun is finally up when he sits back up and turns his head. His eyes are red and the tears are still falling silently. Seeing him like this is destroying me.
“I would have loved that baby, loved that baby so much, Izzy. We would have been so happy,” he says, each word pushing an invisible dagger into my heart. I know it isn’t my fault that I miscarried, and I long ago coped with the loss, but right now, in this moment, I feel as if it happened yesterday.
“I know, Axel,” I offer. “I wish I knew what to say to help you, to ease this pain.”
He turns his body so that he is sitting completely on the dock before opening his arms; I climb in. “All these years, I was so mad at you and I held onto that anger so I wouldn’t feel the hurt. Fuck me, Izzy. I thought you were happy, that you had moved on without even a second thought. I don’t even know how to begin processing this. I don’t know how to grieve a child I never knew I almost had.” His words are soft above my head as we sit there looking across the water that is lapping up against the shore. We silently mourn the past that was taken from us without our knowledge.
“When I lost the baby, I wasn’t in a good place, Axel. It took me a while, a long while, before I started to feel human again. At that point, I thought you were gone, Ax . . . I thought you were lost to me forever, and when I lost that baby, it was like I lost the last part of love we had.” I turned to look at him. “When I met Brandon I was vulnerable. I wasn’t looking for someone, but he knew how to play the part and he made me need him. Looking back now, I know I never loved him. I needed the love that I thought he could bring me. I was so alone. I need you to know that I never once stopped loving you Axel. Please don’t take that on your shoulders.”
He looks at me like he is looking into my soul before placing a soft kiss against my forehead. “I know, Izzy. I don’t know all of the details to your marriage, but I know you, and I believe that.”
We sit down by the lake with the cold November breeze blowing and I tell him about meeting Brandon and the early years before the abuse. Axel handles it well, only tensing up a few times. When I start to get to the bad stuff, I can feel the rage building. I gloss over a lot of the bad stuff, but by the end, he knows everything. I think he is going to blow a gasket when I tell him about the letter from June.
“She fucking told you what?!” he yelled.
“Uh. She said that you were dead. I don’t know why I believed her. I really don’t. You have to know that I would never have given up on you and on us. But, Axel? She said you were dead and I had no other way of confirming if it was true or not. It was her way of making me think the worst, and I did.”
He looks mad. No, not mad. He looks bloodthirsty.
“I will kill that bitch,” he grinds out. His eyes are flashing and his nostrils are flaring with each rapid breath.
“Seriously, Ax, can we just look forward now? No one wants to see her get hers more than I do but look where we are. We won. You and I, we are finally back to where we are meant to be. Don’t let her win. Please.” It takes a while but he calms down. We sit there in silence while he takes in everything I just told him. I can see all the emotions, from anger to resolve, cross over his face.
“I wish I would have tried harder. I keep thinking if I would have approached you when I finally found you that things would be different now. We might have more kids; I would finally have my rings on your finger. It kills me, fucking kills me,” he says when I finish explaining everything the last twelve years has brought me.
“Stop it.” I get off his lap and kneel in front of his relaxed form leaning against one of the posts supporting the dock. Taking his face between my hands and leaning in close, before I finish. “You can’t sit here and play what-if. It has taken me a long time to realize that what-ifs will never change the past, Axel. Right here and right now, you have to promise me that we look forward. No more living with what we could have had. From this day on, we are the new Axel and Izzy.”
A small smile forms on his face and some of the sadness leaves his eyes. I lean in and kiss him quickly before releasing his face and sitting back down next to him.
“Axel and Izzy, huh? That mean you want to be my girlfriend or some shit?” He laughs and it sounds like music to my ears.
“No, I just want to be yours. That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I answer, reaching over and linking our hands.
“Princess, you have always been mine. Always. I can promise you to try, but this shit will sit heavy. You have no idea what I want to do to that motherfucker.”
“I know, but can we try? Just try to take each day as the gift it is? I finally have you back, Axel, and for once in a long time, I feel like myself again. Baby, I feel strong.”
His eyes flare as he pulls me close and plasters a kiss so full of love on my lips that the cold around us has been forgotten.
“Let’s get inside. I’m suddenly starving,” he says with a wink. We stand up and walk back into the warmth of his empty house hand in hand.
Axel
I slowly shift from the bed for the second time this morning after wearing Izzy out. Goddamn, crawling back into her tight fucking pussy was like coming home all over again. My dick starts getting hard just thinking about how rough we came together. All the emotions hung thick between us, but knowing that she was finally—fucking finally—my girl again had me feeling like I needed to mark her.
I look down at the angel sleeping in my bed and smile. She is passed out and I doubt an earthquake would wake her at this point. It’s been three hours since we climbed back up to the house from our talk at the docks. Three hours of intense lovemaking that had us both screaming over and over. I don’t even think there is a drop of come left in my balls at this point. She sucked me dry—literally. A few times.
I have to leave this room before the sight of her naked body, every creamy, exposed inch of her skin, has my dick begging for more. More importantly, I need to get this phone call over with before she wakes up.
Jogging down the stairs and into the kitchen, I locate my cell on the counter, where I tossed it last night, and walk out the back to place the call.
The phone rings a few times before I hear Greg’s muffled voice come over the line.
“What, motherfucker?” he says
“Nice. Good morning to you too, asshole.” It’s 10:00 in the morning. Shouldn’t he be doing something productive? “Long night?”
“What do you want, Reid?”
“Jesus Christ, are you always a little bitch in the morning? Forget it. I need you to get with Locke and run every fucking thing you can on Izzy’s ex. I want the fucking dirt and I want it yesterday. Hear this, G. I want him so fucked that he will feel my dick in his throat. We need to find something that will lock this bastard up for-fucking-ever.”
That got his attention.
“She finally opened up to you, huh.” Not a question, but he would get an answer.
“I know everything, G. No secrets between us now. Once we get this motherfucker put away, I can finally give my girl the future we were meant to have. I might not like that you are so close to MY girl, but I am man enough to appreciate everything you have done for her when I couldn’t.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Do it. Call Locke, and you two do whatever needs to be done. Keep me posted, but I plan on locking my doors and burying myself deep in my girl for days. Do not fucking bother me unless you have something.”
I hang up the phone to his laughter before slowly climbing the stairs, falling back into my bed, and pulling my girl close.
Finally feeling like my heart can beat again.
Izzy
I can feel the sun warming my skin. I love this blissful state between sleep and just waking. But I no longer relish this moment for being numb. No . . . now I relish this moment because it reminds me that I am alive.
The sun streaming through the big picture windows warms my back, and the hard warmth under my cheek is all radiating from Axel.
My Axel.
I sigh, slowly bring my head off his chest, and look into his sleeping face. He looks youthful in his sleep. The hardness that is normally present is wiped clean. All the heavy emotion from yesterday has been erased and the small smile that teases his lips reminds me of our promise. From this point, on there is no more pain of the past hanging between us. We are once again Axel and Izzy.
It’s fucking beautiful.
Running my eyes down his long, hard body, I notice the tent pitching the sheets that lie loosely on his hips. With a naughty smile, I softly run my hand down his abdomen, enjoying the tensing of his abs as I caress each inch. I check to make sure he is still asleep before I slowly peel the sheet off his body. His thick cock springs up once free of the sheet, standing tall from his body and begging for attention, judging by the small drop of come oozing from the tip.
Jesus, I still can’t believe how different his body is.
When my hand reaches his neatly trimmed pubic hair, I slide it under his straining skin and cup his warm balls. I roll them softly and test their heaviness before running my hand up and over the silky skin of his throbbing erection. More pre-come seeps from the tip, and my mouth waters at the sight.
Leaning up from where I’m resting next to his side, I bring my body down next to his hips, my legs folded under me, and lower my lips down towards his cock. I lick the drop of come off the tip before placing a soft kiss against his heated skin. He offers a soft moan and stirs slightly but doesn’t wake. Wrapping my hand around the thickness of his cock, I notice for the first time just how large he is. Is he even going to fit in my mouth?
Licking my lips, I open wide and suck the mushroomed tip into my mouth, swirling my tongue around before releasing and running my tongue from tip to root. He lets out a louder groan and I see his hand fisting the out of the corner of my eye.
I continue licking and caressing his throbbing cock a few times before he lets out a loud curse and shifts swiftly, bringing his torso up roughly. The movement jars me enough that I lose my suction and he falls from my mouth with a loud pop that echoes through the room.
His eyes are dark with desire; the hunger is heavy in the room.
“Good morning,” I offer with a wicked smile. “I got hungry.”
“Fuck me. Got hungry, huh? Jesus, baby, you’re going to kill me.” He smiles before he reaches down and pulls me up his body. “Love your mouth on my dick, baby, but I love your pussy more.” He grips me by the hips and lifts up. He needs no help persuading me to guide him inside my seeping body. I was ready for him the second I opened my eyes.
Our lovemaking is hard and quick. Before I know it, we are both crying out in our shared climax.
I fall back onto his chest, slick with his perspiration that is sliding against my own.
“Good morning, Princess,” he mumbles into my hair.
We both laugh and I hold him closer, enjoying this new lightness between us. We cuddle there for a while before he gets up to clean himself off. I smile when he walks back from the bathroom with a washcloth in hand.
“You do know I know how to clean up myself, right?” I joke.
“My job. I like seeing my come all over your skin. Mine. This is my job.” He continues to wipe me clean before leaning down and giving my sensitive skin a kiss that causes me to moan long and loud.
He laughs lightly, falling back next to me in the bed.
“We might want to get up at some point today,” I note, looking over to the window. The sun is hanging high in the sky, letting us know we have missed a good portion of the day.
“I’m happy right where I am and have no plans of leaving this bed today.”
“Hate to point out the obvious, Axel, but we might want to eat at some point.” I look into his smiling eyes before continuing. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I plan on enjoying this fine-ass body some more today and I will need some fuel!”
His body shakes with silent laughter and I cuddle back down next to his side. Reaching out, I touch the hands of the angel tattooed on his other side. I can’t see the body from here, but from what I remember of the tattoo, it was done in almost a loving and peaceful way.
“Why an angel?” I ask.
He is silent for a few seconds before answering. “Look closer,” is all I get.
Puzzled by his answer, I crawl over his body and bring my face closer to the tattoo. I gasp when I get my first good look at her face. It’s me. Holy shit, that’s me.
“Um . . .” I offer lamely.
“I told you, you were the only person I have ever given my heart to. You have always been the angel in my life, Izzy. You came into my life when I needed you the most, always happy and so full of love for me. Not one day went by that I didn’t know how you felt. I got this a few years ago. You might not have been by my side physically but I couldn’t deny you were there mentally. Every day I was gone, it was the memory of you that pushed me, and even when I thought I had lost you for good and through that anger . . .” He trails off and I look up into his eyes. “Even through the anger of losing you, I still knew you were my angel. My light.”
Oh my God.
“I love you, Princess.”
“I love you, too,” I croak and fall into his arms.
In that moment, I know that whatever was broken over the years has finally been put back together again.
I am whole.