“So you have two options—our guest room, which, you know, you’re totally welcome here, but the girls are spending the night to have cinnamon rolls in the morning, so it’s going to be chaos,” Hannah says later the next night over a menagerie of Chinese food containers. It’s a tradition—after a long day of prepping and cooking, we get takeout. “Or you can stay in the cottage.”
“The cottage?” Damien asks.
“No one’s staying there right now?” I ask, confused. Over the years, it’s housed Hannah and Jordan, and part of me assumed once Jordan left, someone else moved in.
“Nope, Aut’s been keeping it empty for girls’ nights, mostly.”
“No offense, but we’ll stay in the cottage,” I say with a smile. I turn to Damien. “It’s a tiny house behind Autumn and Steve’s house. Hannah lived there for years while nannying before Hunter bought this place, then Hunter’s half-sister, Jordan, lived there for a bit.”
“Now we mostly get drunk and avoid responsibilities there,” Autumn says with a laugh.
“You mind driving a few blocks tonight?” I ask, looking at Damien whose eyes have been on me for most of the night, watching me interact with my family and chosen family.
“Trust me, you’re gonna want to stay there. It’s gonna be a shit show here, stupid early,” Hunter tells his friend, and something about my sister’s husband being friends with Damien warms me. Damien laughs and smiles at me.
“Probably for the best, yeah?” he asks, and I nod.
“It’s tiny and cramped. Not very luxurious.”
“I grew up in a tiny apartment in the Bronx, babe. I think I can handle it.” This small crumb of his childhood makes me want to know more—everything, really. I also find it interesting that the farther we get from the city, from his work, from his colleagues, the more that thick New York accent comes out. I freaking love it.
“Got it,” I say with a smile. “Cottage it is.”
“So this is it,” I say, walking into the tiny cottage behind Autumn and Steve’s house where my sister used to live. “Wow, nothing has changed,” I say, mostly to myself, noting the girly pink decor, the floral wallpaper in the bedroom, and the pink blanket on the couch.
“You sure you never lived here?” he asks with a smile, looking around. “It’s like a little dollhouse, tiny and pink.”
“When I was a kid, my sister was my idol. I wanted to be her,” I say, tossing my bag onto the couch and digging in it. I’m exhausted, and somewhere buried in here are my cozy pajamas. “Anything she liked, I liked times a million and made it my entire personality.” My hand hits the pink pajamas, and I whip them out with a triumphant smile. “Hence pink,” I say, smiling at him.
“Ah, got it. How about going for a former player in New York?” he asks, and a chill runs down my spine. He moves, coming closer until I’m forced to stand straight, wrap my arms around his neck, and touch my nose to his. His breath plays along my lips.
“Former player?” I ask, the words barely audible, but he hears them.
Of course he does.
He’s Damien.
I’m learning that when it comes to me, he’s always at full attention.
“Thinking of changing my ways. Settling down.” His lips press to mine gently as my heart pounds in my chest. “Why bother, you know? Found a fucking perfect one. Why mess with that?”
It’s then, I know.
I fucked up.
I fucked up because this is good. This is more. This has potential.
And I ruined that potential by starting it off on a bed of deceit and revenge.
“Damien, I—”
“Serious talk for another day, rubia,” he says, walking toward me, his voice low. His hands move to my hips, pulling me in close to him. “We’ll talk about us and feelings and confessions another day. For now, why don’t you put those pajamas to the side? You’re not going to need them.” His hands move to the pajamas in my hand, tossing them to the side before he’s lifting me, urging me to wrap my legs around his waist, and having me direct him to the bedroom.
And who am I to argue?
He tosses me onto the pink bed with a canopy overtop, and I giggle as I land, but his face is anything but joking.
Instead of the normal feral hunger in his eyes, though, there’s a softness there.
A softness I’m scared to see because every moment with him is building to something more. Something more that I’m finding it harder each day to ignore exists. And when I stop ignoring that, I’ll start to see the truth beyond what’s in front of me: that Damien and I are becoming more than just fun, that things are moving in a more serious direction, and this plan of mine might be wrong.
But as is his way, Damien’s next words wipe any serious thoughts from my mind.
“Undress. I want to watch,” he says, and I bite my lip, suddenly nervous, but acquiesce all the same, wiggling out of my leggings and taking my underwear with them. Then I lift my sweater and unclasp my bra until what I was wearing is just a pile of fabric at the side of the bed. “Lie back on the pillows for me,” he says, eyes devouring my body.
I obey, as seems to be my way these days.
“Legs wide, Abigail.” I spread them, sitting up in the bed just a bit as I do, my heart racing. “Farther.” A low groan leaves my lips as he says it, and I spread my legs just a hair wider, until it’s almost uncomfortable. “There she is.” The words are to himself, almost in awe as his eyes zero in on my wet center. A hand moves up and I play with my nipple, completely lost to the world.
“Hands to your pussy, baby. I want to see all of you.” He’s lifting his shirt over his head, tossing it to the pile, and my eyes roam his body, clad only in boxers now. When did he take off his pants?
There’s no time to overthink as my hands move to my thighs, sliding up and using a finger on each hand to spread myself open, to reveal myself to him. “God, so fucking pretty, baby. I’ve been thinking about this since the night on the phone.” My breathing quickens as I watch him lower his underwear, still standing at the side of the bed. “Show me what you do when I’m not around to take care of you.”
This is new, something I’ve never done before—touch myself for a man. I should probably be self-conscious about it, nervous.
But I’m not. Without my permission, my hand is moving, a finger dipping in and then dragging up the quickly pooling wet, circling my clit with it as I let out a slow moan.
“Fucking beautiful,” he says, again to himself, watching the show I’m putting on for him. I repeat the journey, dipping down, dragging up, circling my clit. Then I repeat circling my clit, pressing harder and dragging a moan from my lips. “Fingers. In. Two.” Damien’s words are sharp, quick like he can’t use full sentences, but then I see his own hand is wrapped around his thick cock, slowly pumping.
Another unavoidable moan of his name falls from my lips and I watch his own tip up.
“You like watching that, rubia?” he asks, pumping again, my eyes stuck there, watching pre-cum pool at the head. “Fingers, Abigail. Inside, fuck yourself.” Like the obedient woman I didn’t realize I was, I do as he asks, taking two fingers and sliding them inside of me. I’m so wet, they glide easily, and I groan at being filled, at the tapping of the ache already growing in my belly.
“That’s it. Just think about how full you’ll be when it’s my cock.” His eyes are locked to where my fingers are disappearing, where my hips are bucking, his own hand speeding just a fraction. “Such a good little whore, my baby is. Do you like being on display for me?” My fingers move faster, more frantically as his hand follows suit, and a desperate sound leaves my lips.
“Stop,” he says, and I mewl in protest but obey, moving to remove my fingers. “Leave them.” I keep my fingers planted inside of me, throbbing around them as I watch him crawl up the bed. His hand moves to my wrist, tugging until my fingers leave my pussy, and then he guides them in front of his face. One finger disappears in his mouth as his eyes lock to mine, sucking and cleaning the finger as he does before taking it back out. Then the hand holding my wrist moves, pushing the hand to my own mouth.
“Open.” I do, and the finger he didn’t clean enters my mouth, the musky sweet taste taking over my senses. His eyes stay on mine as he gives me my next instructions. “Clean those for me, baby.” As he lets go of my wrist, I do as he asks. He moves to between my legs and then tugs my hips down, positioning me where he wants me as he watches me suck. “Good job, Abigail,” he says, and I clench again at his praise.
He’s on his knees before me, staring down at me as he takes a pillow, moving it to under my hips. My blood races in my veins at the new position, the air unable to get fully into my lungs as I await his next move.
But he just sits there on his heels, kneeling in front of me with his cock hard, watching me as I lie there, my needy body on fire.
“Damien,” I whimper, needing something. Anything. He just smiles. I move a hand down my body, desperate for some kind of relief, my wet fingers moving to tug at my nipples. A miscalculation on my part because it just sends a pulse directly to my clit, torturing me, my pussy clenching. He chuckles.
The man chuckles at me in my time of need.
“God, so desperate for my cock, aren’t you?” he asks then moves until his hips line up with my lifted ones. ‘So desperate for the only person who can give you relief.” I moan miserably, trying to shift my hips to get him inside, to get friction, to get . . . anything.
“That’s what you get, Abigail,” he says, his voice tense. “I’ve spent every day for two weeks desperate for you. Dying for your body, needing to be inside of you.” He notches the head and I moan. “Needing this body.”
“Damien, please—”
“This is what you get for turning me into a desperate man,” he says then thrusts in, filling me to the hilt. “This is what you get for consuming my thoughts.” His hands move to my hips as he thrusts again, using the added leverage to somehow get deeper.
“Fuck!” I shout, unable to say anything else, do anything else but clamp down on him and viciously tug my nipples as he fucks me.
“That’s it, baby. You’re so good at taking my cock, aren’t you?” he says, eyes locked to where he’s fucking me mercilessly. “Fucking look at that. Beautiful.” It’s like he’s talking to himself, a monologue about what’s happening, and I’m just along for the ride as he pounds into me, the headboard slamming against the wall with each thrust.
“God, Damien, I need more. I—”
“You’ll get more when I say you do, Abigail,” he says then moves a hand from my hip to my thigh to my knee, looping it around his hips. “Until then, you’re going to take my cock like a good girl, yeah?” I moan in response, my body overloaded with feelings and unbearable pleasure. “Yeah?” he asks again, and it’s clear that he wants a response as he continues to move in me, so fucking deep, each thrust grating against my G-spot at this angle.
“Yes. Yes, Damien!”
“Yes what?” he asks through gritted teeth.
He’s close.
I could probably clamp down, speed the process, and get him where I need him, but where’s the fun in that?
So instead, I answer the way I know my man wants.
“I’ll take your cock like a good girl, baby.” Despite being overwhelmed and the moans ripping through me, I somehow was able to string together the words he needed to hear. A groan of satisfaction comes from Damien.
“Such a good fucking girl,” he says, then one hand moves, a thumb strumming my clit and my body singing in response. “Now come for your man, baby. Scream my name,” he says through gritted teeth.
And with his permission, I do.
Because Damien Martinez owns my body, and what he tells it to do, it does.
“Damien!” I shout, my voice breaking halfway through until I’m convulsing on his cock, mouth open, not a sound leaving as I shatter around him. A hand moves, rounding my shoulder as leverage to help him get deeper, and I gurgle out another sound of pleasure as the orgasm elevates, taking any shred of sanity I have left.
And then he slams in unbearably deep with a yell, pumping into me as he collapses, murmuring my name into my neck.
“Growing up here must have been fun,” Damien says later that night in the cottage’s darkness. We’ve showered and gotten ready for bed, but I completely forgot how dark it gets out here. Trees line the property and without all the light pollution in the city, all there is is dark skies and bright stars.
“It was. Always someone to hang out with, someone to listen to.” He’s quiet for a moment, and I think he’s done talking, ready for sleep, but then he speaks.
“And your parents?” he asks for the first time since I told him I didn’t really have any. I sigh and answer in the dark’s comfort.
“My dad is off somewhere, on his third or fourth wife. Mom is a few towns over, I think. We don’t talk. Once I was done with school, she was done with us.”
“But you have Hannah.” He says it like a statement, like he’s saying more than just the words.
“Yes. I have Hannah and I’m forever grateful. One day, she’ll give me nieces and nephews that I can coddle, but until then, I have Autumn’s and Kate’s kids.”
“They’re cute,” he says. “Kate’s kids. Cal’s a blast.” Dean and Kate came for dinner, bringing Cal and baby Jesse, who I loved on just as much as the others.
“The cutest. Kate graduated in my year, so it’s kind of crazy seeing her with Cal. He’s getting so big.” We’re both quiet for another few minutes, Damien running his fingers through my hair in the most soothing motion and us both lost in our thoughts.
Until once again, he breaks the silence.
“Do you want kids?” he asks so quietly, and my body tightens with nerves. I’m unsure of how to respond or if I should just give him an easier, fake answer. Not because I don’t fully believe in the answer I’m about to give, but because society has decided that if you are a woman of childbearing age and not adamant about reproducing, people quickly assume there is something wrong with you.
Still, I sigh before answering.
“No.” His brow furrows.
“No?”
“Nope,” I say, popping the “p” and distracting myself by tracing a path of freckles I can see in a patch of moonlight on his pec with my nail.
“Is . . . there a reason?” he asks, and I’ll admit, this is new. Someone rarely asks why before they jump down my throat, telling me how lonely I’ll be when I’m old or how it’s something I’ll regret. How in four or five years, my “clock” will start ticking like I’m some kind of computer program, and I’ll need to scramble to find someone to agree to give me children graciously.
As if that’s all a woman could possibly have to live for.
“I just don’t want them.” I shrug and then roll onto my back. “Kids are cool, but they’re all-consuming. My sister had to raise me because our parents sucked. Not that I think I would ever be like that, but it doesn’t sound . . . appealing. Having my entire life dictated by a tiny human.” I look over to Damien, half scared by what I’ll see.
Even Richard didn’t understand this about me.
I was willing to change for him, to try for him.
But Damien doesn’t look confused. Instead, intrigue plays on his face.
I continue talking, my anxiety getting the best of me.
“I’m excited to be the cool aunt. I love being that for Aut’s kids and Kate’s two. But a mom? I just don’t think . . . it’s for me.”
“So what do you want instead?” he asks, curiosity in his voice.
And again, because it’s dark and I’m in a comfortable, familiar place, and I’m topped up with love from my family, I tell him.
“I want . . . love. And I want passion. Excitement. I want to travel and to spend my money on expensive shoes instead of diapers. I want to be able to up and leave if I want to without worrying about schools and pediatricians and whatever the fuck else.”
And because the room is dark and the walls don’t have ears, I finish my thought, telling Damien the part I’ve kept dear to me since I was five.
I have never confessed this.
Not to Hannah, not to Cami, not to Kat.
“I want a man to be absolutely wild about me.” I take a deep breath, letting the dark be a shield. “My dad left my mom when I was born. Kids were too much work, and it left little time for him. That . . . broke my mom. She wanted him to be consumed by loving her, to be his sun and his moon. But when she couldn’t completely devote herself to him because of us, he left her for another woman. She blamed us for that.”
Damien’s fingers move to my hair, brushing it back, a soothing action, but not interrupting my train of thought.
“Hannah isn’t like her. She always wanted to give every single scrap of herself to the rest of the world. Always wanted to be everything to someone, to kids, to her husband. She’s selfless, and empathetic, and compassionate. She was born to be a mom.”
“And you?” My tongue moves out, wetting my lips, nerves taking over.
“I’m like my mom,” I say in a whisper. There it is.
My deepest fear.
Here with this man, in the comfort of the dark and in a familiar room, I’m confessing everything.
“I want to give everything to a man and let him consume me. I want to fall so hard that I don’t know where up is. I want to be selfish, and I want to be his and his alone. I don’t want to share. I’m like my mom, because I think a small part of me would resent a child for taking that possibility from me.”
The true reason for what Richard did gutting me was just this. I gave him everything—time and love and labor—expecting to get that back. And I made excuses why he didn’t, four years’ worth. I told myself that once we were married, it would change. That once he made partner, he would be different. But I see now that was bullshit.
Knowing I could have lost myself in that man, knowing that I had already started to lose myself in him—it’s terrifying. And knowing that a man let that happen, that he saw me give and give and give until I was a husk of a person designed to fit his requirement, he deserves to be taught a lesson.
But the truth of it is, knowing I have that poison in me, knowing I have the ability to lose myself in a man and be decimated by him further cements me not wanting children.
“I don’t want kids either,” he says, his voice a whisper, and I wonder if he feels the same peace in the dark as I do. “I don’t want to bring more kids into this world. I see day in and day out the horrors of the world. Just how shitty people can be, how absolutely low people can go. Some days, I look at a case file and the future feels so fucking bleak. I can’t bring a child into the world knowing that’s out there.”
I don’t answer because I don’t know how to. College boyfriends all thought I was crazy, not wanting children. Even Richard would occasionally question it, despite him apparently knowing we’d never get that far.
“When I saw you with those kids today, I thought for sure this was the end of us.”
The end of us.
The end of us.
His words ring in my mind because where was the beginning of us?
The beginning of us started in ways I’m not proud of, and I don’t know how to dig myself out.
“Why?”
“You love those kids.”
“That’s not always enough,” I say, a hint of irritation brewing.
“I know that. I agree. I just . . . It’s rare. A woman as kind and beautiful as you on the same page as me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m one in a million,” I say sarcastically, rolling away. His arm on my waist stops me, turning me to face him and brushing my hair from my face.
“You are, rubia. I see it every time I’m with you. I don’t need kids or anything else for that matter to be happy with you. It’s just you. You make me happy. I’ll do what it takes to prove it to you.”
