A warm body presses against mine, and an equally as warm hand wraps around my breast from the outside of my shirt. Then I feel a hard length press between the cheeks of my ass, along with a deep moan, as fingers grip my breast a bit tighter.
My entire body freezes, and I try to wiggle out of the grasp, but the arm around me tightens even more as soft lips graze my neck.
“You’re so fuckin’ soft and sweet, Cleo,” Paxton whispers against my skin. I relax, only slightly, now that I know it’s him.
“Pax,” I breathe as his hand squeezes my breast and then travels down my stomach to the waistband of my shorts.
I inhale sharply when his fingers dip below the band and caress my lower abdomen. With each sweep of his fingers, he dips lower and lower, until he reaches the top of my panties.
“Missed you, sweetheart,” he whispers, pressing his mouth against my shoulder and sweeping his tongue out to touch my skin.
My entire body shakes beneath his touch, and my back arches when his finger grazes my clit. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched, and even longer since I felt the only touch I’ve wanted—his.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I sigh as I lift my arm and wrap it around the back of his neck, my fingers diving into his short hair.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Clee. This is exactly what we should be doing,” he murmurs as his fingers slide through my center before two fill me.
I gasp, my body jerking with his movement, and I feel his chest rumble against my back as he starts to pump in and out of my pussy. I feel a light sheen of sweat cover my body as my hips involuntarily meet his thrusting fingers.
Paxton’s palm presses against my clit, and I can’t stop myself from grinding against it, feeling him all around and inside of me, years of dreams coming to reality.
I pinch my eyes closed tightly as my body starts to shake, and I know that I’m close—so close to my climax that if he stops, I’m going to scream and cry simultaneously.
“Come, sweetheart. Fuck, baby, come all over my hand,” Paxton whispers against my ear, and I do.
I completely shatter in his hold. My entire body freezing as I let out a squeak and then a long moan. I sag against him. He continues to pump his fingers in and out of me a few more times before he removes himself from beneath my pajamas.
A wave of guilt, disgrace, and remorse washes over me the instant my breathing becomes normal and I’m back to myself. How could I let this happen? After everything he’s done to me, and after the life he’s obviously been living, I’m allowing him to touch me. What is wrong with me?
“Not askin’ you to ride my dick yet, Cleo. You don’t have to freak out,” Paxton hisses. I feel the bed dip behind me as he climbs off.
I roll over and place my hands under my cheek, watching him from behind. He’s wearing only black boxer briefs, but, shit, his back is so wide, and he has muscles there that I’ve only seen in pictures. He also has a tattoo that covers his entire back. It matches the back of his vest, and I wonder if every single member of his gang has it as well.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper.
“Why?” he asks, turning to face me as he pulls up a pair of jeans over his hips. “We’re married, Clee, or did you forget that? I sure as fuck didn’t. I told you that shit between us was going to change. Mean that, babe.”
“And this change you’ve decided to make, this is all because you thought I was kidnapped or dead or whatever?”
“Well, can’t say I didn’t want back in there the second I watched you walk up your stairs the first night I went to your house, sweetheart. You’re absolutely the prettiest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen, at eighteen and at thirty,” he says, as if it’s supposed to make the fact that he only wanted me when he thought he lost me all okay.
He never wanted me when he could have had me, only when he thought he couldn’t. My heart aches with the truth; at the fact that I’m not enough for him. Obviously, I never have been. Then, out of the blue, I’m supposed to just accept whatever he decides to give me, because he’s had a change of heart for this moment. What happens in six months when I’m an old-hat?
“How many women have you been with since you left me?” I ask.
Paxton’s jaw clenches and his whole body stills at my question.
“Don’t matter. Not anymore.” He shrugs, but his face is still hard, his eyes narrowed to slits and focused on me.
“I’m your wife, right?” I ask. “I think it’s safe to say that you’ve been with more than I would ever care to know. So why would you want to settle down now? Just because you want what you can’t have? No way. That doesn’t work for me, Paxton. You had me. You had all of me once, and you threw me away. I don’t want to go through that again,” I whisper.
“Not planning on throwing you away anytime soon, sweetheart. You are my wife, and I’m willing to shovel some shit, because I bought that, baby. But you gotta meet me halfway,” he murmurs, looking down at me, unmoving from where he’s been standing at the side of the bed.
“Why’d you leave me? Why’d you walk away the way you did, knowing that I had nobody but you? I was completely alone, Pax, and you just left. Forget what you did to me before you did that—why did you leave?” I practically beg as tears fill my eyes.
“It doesn’t matter; just know that I had to,” he grunts.
“It matters, Pax. To me, it matters,” I whisper.
“I was messed up, Cleo. I wasn’t right in the head, and I was so not right that I knew I would only hurt you, over and over again. And you, you’re so fuckin’ good and sweet, you would have just taken it, over and over. You proved that shit when you were willing to forget the way I hurt you so quickly.”
“You walked away from me with no explanation because I loved you?” I ask in surprise.
“Doesn’t matter now. It’s over. Now we move on,” he murmurs as he sinks his knee into the bed and crawls toward me.
“It matters to me, Paxton. You abandoned me for eleven years. I loved you more than anything in this world, and you just walked away from me. I was young, and I was so lost, and you didn’t give a shit. I can’t trust anything you tell me, not a single word,” I whisper.
“I’ll fix it, Cleo. Swear, baby I’ll fix it all,” he states as his hand lifts to cup my cheek.
“You can’t just fix it, not by telling me to just forget it and move on. That’s not how it works,” I say, my lips trembling as tears stream down my cheeks.
“Tell me, then. Tell me how to fix this,” he mutters.
“I don’t know, but it’s not by just pretending it never happened. It happened. You left me and you didn’t care where I was, if I had money or food or a place to live. You didn’t care about me at all. You joined this group, and you had these people to lean on while you drank, and did drugs, and had sex with whoever those girls downstairs are. Not once did I cross your mind, in eleven years, not once—did I?”
“Not once, Cleo,” he admits with a shake of his head. “But millions of times. Every minute of every fuckin’ day, I thought about you. I don’t sleep because my mind is filled with visions of you, and nightmares from the desert, both of you fucking haunt me.”
“Why didn’t you look for me, then? If you were so consumed with me, why wait so many years?” I ask on a sob.
“Was fucked up in the head, baby. By the time I got my shit straightened out enough that I could contact you, it’d been years. Honest to fuck, thought you’d moved on, and I didn’t want to disrupt your new life,” he explains.
“I need time to think,” I whisper, moving my head to the side and out of his hold.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs.
I press my lips together and look at the sheets, the place where he was lying next to me just a few minutes ago. I breathe in and out of my nose, trying to keep from crying more. I know that he was probably very messed up. He went to war, he saw horrific things, but I can’t let that be a viable excuse and just accept his abandonment for over a freaking decade. Not just a few weeks, or months, or even years.
He was gone from me for eleven years.
He didn’t know if I was happy. He didn’t know anything.
And I don’t think that he really cared, not really. Sure, it probably kept him up at night—the never knowing—but it didn’t bother him enough to ever find me, not until he thought that I was in real danger.
I don’t know where we go from here, but I do know that we don’t start over from scratch; that I don’t just forget everything that he did, and the way he did it. I can’t pretend none of the past happened, especially the way it did.
I slide off of the bed and look at her. My Cleo, my wife. She’s ignoring me, refusing to look at me, and pressing her lips together, probably to keep from crying. I halfway want her to scream at me, and the other half wants her to just forgive me and agree to start over, as if the past eleven years had never happened.
I don’t know her, anyway—the woman she is—and she doesn’t know the man I’ve become. No matter what, we’re going to have to learn a whole hell of a lot about each other as it is.
“Shower’s across the hall. They’re shared here. There’s a full kitchen, and when you’re ready, you can come in there. If there’s any food, you can eat that, or I can take you out for breakfast,” I inform her. She jerks her head in a slight nod.
I walk away from her again. I always seem to be walking away from her. I make my way to the kitchen and see Honey leaning against the counter, a coffee mug in her hand.
“Hey, Torch,” she whispers, lifting her eyes and giving me a smile. I jerk my chin as my greeting and walk over to the pot to pour my own coffee.
“Soar said that girl you brought in was your wife,” she murmurs, biting her bottom lip.
“She is,” I grunt as I take a sip of coffee, glancing at her over the rim.
Honey looks unsure—shy. If I didn’t know the kind of woman she was, I might believe her act. She’s pretending to be what she thinks I want. Cleo came in at my side, her sexy little skirt and her cardigan covering her arms, her fantastic tits highlighted by her tight undershirt, but not overly so. Then there’s Clee’s sexy as fuck hair—natural, thick curls, and the most gorgeous deep red I’ve ever seen. No woman on earth holds a candle to Cleo.
“I—she’s really pretty,” she whispers.
“Know that, Honey. One of the reason’s I married her,” I murmur gently.
“I—I promise I won’t tell her anything about us,” she offers with a furrowed brow.
“Know you won’t, ‘cause whore’s aren’t allowed to speak to Old Ladies, so it won’t be a problem, now will it?” I ask, arching a brow.
“’Course not,” she whispers before she sets her cup down and scurries out of the kitchen.
“You married me for my looks, and you were with that girl. By the stars in her eyes, not too long ago,” Cleo’s voice says harshly, filling the room.
I turn around to face her and expect to see her angry gaze focused on me, but instead I see nothing but pain etched into her features.
“Cleo,” I whisper.
I close the distance between us and wrap my hand around hers, tugging her into my chest before I slide my other hand around her waist to keep her close to me.
“Then you brought me here to shove it in my face?” she asks, pain now filling her voice as well.
“Of course, I didn’t do that, sweetheart,” I murmur.
“I want to go back to Lis and Theo. They love me and they’ll watch out for me. I don’t want to be here,” she whispers as tears start to fall from her eyes.
“Can’t let that happen, baby.”
“Why? You obviously don’t care about me. Just let me go,” she urges.
“Clee, baby, I care. Trust me, I care,” I say, my own voice sounding husky with emotion.
“Fuck you,” she hisses. My head rears back as though she’s physically hit me. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” She yells as her little fists beat on my chest.
I let her. Christ, do I let her. This is nothing compared to what I deserve from her. Tears continue to fall down her cheeks, her body wracks with sobs, and she physically wears herself out. I pull her into me and just hold her as she continues to cry. Goddamn it, I fucked her up more than I thought I had—more than I imagined I could. My selfishness, my need to shield her from myself, fucked with her.
“There have been two men since you, Paxton. One used me, and the other I was in a relationship with. He loved me, but you were always there. I couldn’t love anyone because of you,” she whispers. I hold her a little tighter.
Fuck, I feel rage that she’s been with anybody else. Once, I was the only man who knew her body.
That feeling quickly fades. I hadn’t thought she’d been celibate. Eleven years is a long fuckin’ time. Now, I feel sadness and guilt. I’d decided that she’d moved on with her life but she hadn’t, not even a little, and a man took advantage of her because of it.
“Who used you, Clee?” I ask as my fingers comb through her hair.
“Doesn’t matter,” she sniffles.
“It matters, sweetheart. It matters to me. Any man that hurts my sweet, innocent, shy wife fuckin’ matters.”
“Even you?” she asks, tipping her head back. I bury my fingers in her hair and hold onto the soft strands as I look into her warm, green eyes.
“Yeah, baby, even me,” I whisper tipping my lips into a grin.
“It was my boss, Stephenson Voight, when I first started working for him,” she shrugs.
“He’ll pay for that,” I grunt.
“No, it’s been years Paxton. I just want to forget it ever happened; forget that I was ever so naïve.”
“Yeah, what else you gonna try and forget about in your past?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
“Him I can forget. It was once and I was hurting and it meant nothing. I could never forget even a moment I had with you. You were everything,” she whispers, making me feel like an even bigger asshole, something I didn’t think was possible at this point.
Fuck. I’ve fucking hurt her in a way where I don’t know if I can fix it. But dammit, I’m gonna try.
“C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get some food in you,” I murmur.
“Paxton,” she sighs.
“We ain’t fixing our problems in a couple conversations. You have to eat, and I’m starved. We’ll go, get some food at this good little diner, and maybe talk a little more, maybe just about nothing much at all. But we need food and fresh air, no matter what way you look at it.”
“Okay,” she nods, giving me a slight smile. It feels like a huge victory.