Aiden
My neck hurts. It’s so tense I honestly think I’m going to pop a vein.
Stuffing my empty wallet back into my pocket, I blow out a breath when I grab the piece of paper that lets me know all the money, I worked so hard for, is gone. I leave the bank, pulling out my phone from my pocket and type out a quick text.
It’s sent. Try to make it work until next month.
I exhale when I press send, knowing they’ll probably blow the money I sent on more poison for their bodies and then demand more.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I barely have any left over from working at the bar and I don’t have time for a second job, practice takes up so much of my time as it is.
I might have gotten rid of one evil in my life for now, but my brothers and my mom are a whole other story. As much as I resent them for beating the crap out of me when we grew up, it doesn’t stop me from wanting to help them out any way I can. We didn’t even have food growing up, if the money I make can get them a loaf of bread that isn’t expired, I’ll do it. I’ll keep sending them money if they need it.
I spot an older lady carrying a cart full of plants, my shoulders drop, my face breaking into a smile at the sight, reminding me of Leila. Her apartment is filled with plants, big ass ones, small ones. I can’t lie, it’s so fucking cute watching her water them and talk to them as if they’re her babies. She glares at me whenever I catch her do it, but I can’t help it. It’s adorable.
It’s a sign from the universe, right? I tell myself exactly that when I push the button on the elevator, taking me to her apartment. I knock on her door, waiting for her to answer.
“Who is it?” she says from the other side.
I smile at her sultry voice, a melody to my ears. She could yell at me and I’d still follow her like a puppy. That girl has me wrapped around her little finger and she doesn’t even know it.
“Aiden,” I reply to the wooden door. A smirk tugs at my lips when I hear her mumble a curse, but when she doesn’t open the door, my eyes narrow. “This would be where you open the door.”
I hear a sigh and then the door opens and a green face pops through the door. I press my lips together to stop my laugh, but I fail, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, I thought this was Leila’s place. I guess not.”
“Ha.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Very funny.”
“What the hell is on your face?” I ask her, unable to stop laughing.
Her eyebrows raise. “You’ve never heard of a face mask?”
I shake my head. “What the fuck is that?”
“Men,” she sighs. “I don’t have time for this. You could have texted.”
My eyebrow lifts. “And you would have answered?”
She contemplates it for a second, shakes her head. “We don’t have any plans.”
“I wanted to see you,” I offer with a shrug. “Can I not come and see you?” Another sigh leaves her mouth as she closes her eyes. How does this girl look so fucking good even with her face painted green?
“I’m sorry, now is not a good time.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t come in,” she says.
“Why not?” She looks to the side, avoiding me. My heart starts to race, my palms getting sweaty. “Leila, if you have some guy in there—”
“What?” she interrupts, looking at me. “No. I don’t. Why would you think that?”
I shrug. “You’re being weird about letting me in.”
“Aiden,” she sighs. “I’m on my period. There, are you happy? You can’t come in because we can’t fuck.”
My eyebrows raise at the bite in her tone. “That doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes narrow. “Did you not hear me?” she asks. “I said we can’t fuck.”
“And I said that doesn’t matter. I wanted to see you. Doesn’t matter what we do, I just want to be with you.”
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes.”
“With clothes on?”
“Yes,” I exasperate, throwing my hands up. “Is that so hard to believe?” She stares at me, lips parted as she looks at me with disbelief. “Are you going to let me in or not?”
She steps back, opening the door wider so I can come into her apartment and close the door behind us. When I face her, my hands itch, very unaware of what I can do in this situation. “Do you need ice cream or something?” I ask her. “A foot rub maybe?”
She tilts her head at me. “Do you have any sisters?”
“Two brothers,” I tell her. “Don’t know shit about what’s going on with your body,” I admit. “But I’ll do whatever you need to make it better.”
Her lips press together, trying to hide her smile and then she shakes her head. “I’m good. I’m on my last day.” When I nod, she squints at me. “You really want to be here?”
I laugh, closing the space between us. “I need to be here right now. There’s nowhere else I want to be.” I lean down to kiss her, the cold green goo on her face landing on mine. I pull back, wiping it.
I must be fucking dreaming because I hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. My eyes widen when I look back at her and she’s laughing. She’s laughing. With me. Holy shit. My heart is about to leave my chest. This beautiful woman is laughing, and she scrunches her nose when she does. God, she’s adorable. I’d never tell her that because she’d probably cut my balls off, but she’s so fucking adorable I want to kiss her. So. Fucking. Bad.
I lean down, brushing our lips together. She hums in my mouth, pushing me away. “Your face is covered in it,” she says in a fit of laughter. The corner of her eyes wrinkling with joy. God, I’ve never been so happy before.
“I don’t care,” I mumble before I lean down and kiss her again.
“Aiden,” she says, pulling away again. “I have to clean you up.”
“Do whatever you want to me,” I mumble, lost in her scent, in her lips. She smells like fresh peaches; it’s intoxicating. I kiss her again. “I don’t care. Kill me. Skin me alive. Just let me kiss you some more.”
She yelps when she feels my lips back on hers but I don’t give her any time to think, I wrap my arms around her waist, feeling her soft body under my fingertips. Her lips feel like velvet, her tongue brushing against mine.
Kissing Leila feels like the world around me has stopped. All the noise and pressure ceases to exist when her lips are on mine. I’m breathless when I pull back and when I look down at her, those pretty pink lips of hers are tipped up in a smirk. “What?” I ask. “Why are you smiling?”
“Your face is green,” she says, chuckling as she looks at me.
“Oh.” I laugh, wiping some of the stuff off my face. “Right.” I look at my fingers, inspecting it. “What’s this for, anyway?”
“I have a photo shoot tomorrow,” she tells me. “I’m doing some prepping, getting my skin to look good.”
I want to tell her she always looks good, but her words run through my mind. “Tomorrow?” I ask her, wondering when I get to see her again.
She nods, sitting on the couch, tucking her leg under. “I’m a little nervous,” she says, glancing up at me.
“Why?” I sit beside her.
She lets out a breath. “It’s a swimwear shoot.” I don’t miss how she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. A nervous Leila isn’t something I’m used to seeing. She’s always so strong, so confident, a bossy little shit putting me in my place.
But the thought of her being on a magazine in a swimsuit for guys to gawk at her makes my jaw—hell, my whole body—tighten. This is not good for the tension in my neck.
“Why are you nervous?” I ask her. “You’re going to look hot.” I can already picture it. Her soft, lush, tan body in some little skimpy bikini. God, if only she knew the dirty thoughts running through my head right now.
She rolls her eyes and turns her body to face me. “I’ve already agreed to fuck you, Aiden. You don’t have to keep complimenting me.”
I furrow my brows. I don’t like how she makes it seem like a chore for me. It’s the easiest thing in the world, telling her how gorgeous she is. “I like complimenting you,” I tell her. “I want you to know you’re beautiful.”
“I know that.” She glances at me from the side, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.
I laugh. “Do you? Because you seem to hate when I say anything nice.”
She shakes her head, smirking. “That’s not true. I’m a praise whore.”
I wrap my arms around her shoulder, pulling her into me, her head resting on my chest. Fuck, stay there forever. Please. “Oh, I know, gorgeous,” I whisper in her ear. “You love when I tell you how much I love watching you swallow my cock in your tight pussy,” I murmur, my breath hitting her jaw. “You love when I tell you how good you feel.” She shivers against me. “You love when I worship every inch of you.”
“This isn’t fair,” she whispers, breathing hard. “I can’t do anything about this.” She whimpers frustrated.
I laugh, pulling back. “Fine, I’ll stop.” She takes a deep breath, turning her head and smiling when she sees my face again, which probably still has that green goo. “Put some on me,” I tell her, patting her cheek.
“You want a face mask?”
“Hell yeah.” I grin. “You can’t be the only one that looks good in this relationship.” Her face drops and I curse inwardly at myself. Why did I just use that word? I clear my throat. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes dipping a little. She pulls away from me, getting up from the couch. “Be right back with your face mask, sir.” She winks.
I adjust myself on the couch. “I like the idea of you calling me sir,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t get used to it.” She turns around, heading out of the living room, my eyes tracking her movements.
Those hips, that ass. God. The tight, black leggings she has on make my dick twitch. I look down at my pants and let out a sigh. “Not gonna happen,” I mumble to my dick, tipping my head back and closing my eyes. How did I get here? From one silly game to sitting here craving her company.
The couch dips, my eyes fly open and I see her sitting next to me, holding up a long tube. “You good?”
I nod, smiling at her. She’s so pretty. I don’t ever want to close my eyes if it means I could look at her forever. “All better now.” She chuckles, opening the tube and pours out the green mixture onto her fingertips. Her fingers swipe across my face, wiping the stuff all over. “Fuck,” I curse. “It’s cold.”
She laughs, shaking her head. “Such a baby. Be still.”
“I can think of something that would make me behave,” I tell her, grinning.
“And what’s that?
“If you sat on my lap,” I say, smiling as I rake an arm around her waist, pulling her up.
“Aiden, no.” She gasps, pushing my arm away. “I can’t sit on your lap.”
“Why not?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes. “Just sit still, idiot.”
I raise my brows at her, wincing when I feel that cold liquid on my face again. “You’re not getting a tip if you keep talking to me like that.”
She laughs and lifts an eyebrow. “And what tip would that be?”
I laugh, my heart jumping in my chest. My girl knew exactly what kind of dirty joke I was about to make. I stare at her in awe as she wipes that green shit on my face. It’s cold and itchy, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“There,” she says when she’s done. “You’re gorgeous, darling.” She says in the worst southern accent I’ve heard.
“So are you.”
She wipes her hands on a rag, and I just stare, admiring her beautiful face, her eyes a close match to the green painted on her skin, except for the golden specks in them.
She turns, grabbing a small camera from her table, facing it towards me.
My eyebrows raise. “Are you taking a picture of me?”
She looks at me from behind the camera. “Stay still.”
I let out a laugh, giving her a smile until the shutter goes off. “I didn’t know you took pictures.”
She shrugs, pulls out the Polaroid, and gives it a shake. “I prefer being in front of a camera rather than behind it, but yeah.” She glances at me. “My parents had stacks and stacks of photo albums and I always loved going through them. So I decided to take more pictures.” She tucks her leg underneath her. “Most of them are of my plants.”
The mention of her childhood brings an odd feeling to my stomach, wondering what it would be like if I had a different family, a different life. “Let me see,” I say, gesturing to the Polaroid in her hands.
She holds it out, grinning when we both look at my green face covering the picture. “I look as bad as you do,” I tease, nudging her.
She shakes her head, scrunching her nose. “You look worse.”
I grab the camera from her hands, turning it over until it’s facing us, and wrap my arm around Leila. I pull her into me and bring our lips together. The shutter goes off, and when I pull out the picture, I can’t stop staring at it. She’s so beautiful, even with her face painted green. “This one’s mine,” I tell her, pocketing the picture.
“Why do you get to keep it?”
The smile on my lips belongs to this girl and this girl only. “I want to look at it every day,” I admit.
When she looks at me, her lips twitch in a smile, and she lets out a sigh. “You’re going to make some girl so happy one day.”
A weird feeling settles in my stomach at her words. “What about you?” I ask her, my brows dipping. “Don’t I make you happy?”
She parts her lips, both of us staring back at each other, but before she can say something, her stomach rumbles, and she freezes, and her eyes widen when she looks up at me. “You heard that, huh?”
I nod. “You hungry?”
She shrugs. “I’m fine.”
I glare at her. “When was the last time you ate?” I ask her, anticipating her response. After what happened in that doctor’s office, I’m not letting her ‘forget’ ever again. She shrugs, which makes me mad because I hate that she’s not taking care of herself. I sigh, get up from the couch, and head to her kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she asks, peering at me from the couch.
“Making you food. What do you have?” I ask, opening her fridge. Nothing. That’s what. Besides some fruit, eggs, some veg, cheese, and two bottles of beer, the fridge is empty.
I close the fridge, turning back around to face her. “Woman, do you not eat? Where is your food?”
She shrugs, wiping off the mask on her face with the rag. “Wasn’t exactly expecting company,” she says.
“And what were you going to eat?”
“I would have figured it out,” she says, cleaning the rest of the mask off.
“Come on.”
She glances up at me. “For what?”
“You obviously don’t know how to cook,” I say. “I’m going to teach you.”
