Lust (25 page)

Her head shook side to side as if she didn’t comprehend what I was saying.

“Before I came over earlier, I called every single one of my clients and told them I was no longer in practice. I plan on setting up a new practice where I focus on saving marriages and keeping families together.”

“Why?” she gasped, sounding blindsided by my confession.

“Because there’s no one else I’d rather see naked than you. In fact, you’re the only one I want to watch come apart, the only one I want to touch. For the rest of my life. Ever since I first met you, I knew you’d end up ruining me. And you have. The truth is, Ivy, you have ruined me for any other woman out there because I don’t want anyone but you.”

“What about marriage? I want to get married one day, Cade. Not just play house for the rest of my life. I want to wear a dress and walk down an aisle and say ‘I do.’ That is important to me, and after hearing why you don’t agree with it, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m not going to ask you right now, and I might not ask you in the next year. But if I’m going to marry anyone, it’s going to be you. And if I want you in my life until my dying breath, I will marry you.”

She shook her head in disagreement. “I don’t want you to marry me because it’s what I want.”

“
When
I ask you… it will be because it’s what
I
want.”

More tears fell, but this time, they were accompanied by a smile. “You really mean that?”

“I’ve never meant anything more.”

Her lips crashed to mine, tasting of salt from her tears. I swallowed them all, making a silent promise to swallow all of her pain from here on out, never letting her feel unloved or unsupported again. I knew there would be times in our relationship where we would both slip up, but we’d work things through together.

“Say it,” she pleaded against my lips.

“You fucking own me, Ivy Jaymes.”

She smiled and kissed me again. “You own me, too, Caden Morgan.”

I pulled her off the counter and held her in my arms for a moment. “Okay, as much as I love holding onto you, we have a lifetime to do that. Right now, we need to get your shit packed up so I can take you home.”

“Cade, please stop calling my belongings shit, and I am home.”

I shook my head with a smile. “No, your home is with me.”

“I can’t just move in with you. It’s too soon.”

“Too soon? Ivy, I’ve been waiting thirty-four years for you. I’m not waiting another day. I wasn’t kidding when I said I want you there. I didn’t mean eventually; I meant now. And yes, it is shit. You have a TV that looks like it’s from the nineties, a computer that looks like a first generation IBM, and a recliner that has definitely seen better days.”

She looked around the small space with a slight frown, taking in her “shit.” Her eyes met mine with a twinkle. “I do all of my work on that computer. What will I do without it?”

“Do you have everything saved on a disk?”

“I have an external hard drive.”

“Then that’s all you need. I’ll get you an updated one, one that will probably work a hell of a lot better than that one. We’ll just grab your clothes and your hard drive and be on our way.”

“I don’t recall you ever asking if I wanted to live with you,” she said with a smirk.

I laughed, already knowing my reply to that. “And you won’t hear me ask, either. Asking gives you the option to say no, and I’m not going to take that chance.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “People are going to think I’m a gold-digger.”

“No, not a chance in hell. They might think your pussy is made of gold for getting me to settle down, but no one would think you’re a gold-digger. Considering we don’t have any friends, we don’t have anyone to judge us.”

“Speak for yourself; I have friends.”

“Fictional characters in a book don’t count as friends, Ivy,” I teased and she slapped my arm with a laugh. “But I am serious. We’re taking your things home. Tonight. I’m not waiting another second.”

Her hand stilled on my arm and she fisted my sleeve. Concern flashed in her eyes once more and I waited for her to sort through it. “What are we going to do if I am pregnant? I know you said not to worry about it now, but I need to know. I can’t leave here if I’ll be homeless and pregnant in a month.”

I held her face in my hands as I looked deep in her grey eyes, the red nearly muted for the first time ever. “If you are pregnant… we’ll have to buy a crib and clothes. I’m sure there are more things to buy, but I don’t know what they are. You’ll have to find out for me. We’ll have to pick a name and then have as much sex as we can before you get too big to fuck in all of the fun ways we haven’t tried yet.”

“So it doesn’t scare you?” she asked and I could tell it scared her.

“Not for one second. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not praying that you are, nor will I try to knock you up if you aren’t, but it doesn’t scare me. The only thing that scares me is not being with you.” I glanced in her eyes and smiled. “Now, if you’ll please help me gather your
belongings
, I’d like to get you back to my house so I can strip you naked and practice pulling out.”

Ivy glanced around her room once more with a sudden frown on her face. “This is me, Cade. All of my things are mine and I can’t just throw some things in a bag and leave the rest behind. All of these things are mine, and have been the only possessions I’ve had for years.”

“Then we’ll come back for them. What things do you want to keep?”

“I have kitchen things… pots, pans, plates—”

“I have those things at my house.”

“But they’re not mine,” she argued desperately.

I paused, trying to understand where she was coming from. I didn’t place any value into the objects in my home; they were nothing more than things I had bought when I needed them. If they were damaged or lost, I wouldn’t care. But she cares. “Okay. We’ll take them with us. If we have two then I’ll get rid of mine. It’s not a big deal. What else do you want?”

“I kind of like my bed.”

I took one look at it in the corner and felt my dick start to stiffen in my jeans. “I kind of like it, too. Reminds me of heaven. That was the first place I felt it. You’re right… we can’t get rid of it. We’ll put it in the empty room. It’s been sitting empty for too long. What else?”

Her eyes landed on me and her lips quirked into a smirk. “The recliner.”

I felt my eyebrows rise high on my forehead without any control over them. “Seriously? You can’t possibly have any kind of personal connection to that.” I paused to let out an overly exaggerated sigh. “But fine, if that’s what you want then we’ll find a space for it. But please don’t be offended if it’s in a room that no one will see—ever.”

She laughed—loudly. It caught me by surprise since I don’t think I had ever heard those cackles come from her before. Her eyes started to water as she gasped for air and I couldn’t help but join in. I wasn’t sure what we were laughing about, but it felt fucking amazing to be overcome with gut-clinching laughs.

“I don’t need the recliner, Cade,” she said as she tried to catch her breath. “I just wanted to see what you’d say. It’s good to know where I stand with you, though. I like knowing you’d let me have my way.”

I picked her up by her waist and carried her to her bed, tossing her on her mattress none too gently. “And it’s good to know you let me have my way with you,” I said with my lips against the soft skin of her neck.

Somehow, I convinced Ivy to let us say a proper farewell to her apartment and the things in it. And by proper farewell, I mean, we fucked everywhere. After deciding it would take too long to pack all of her things up that afternoon, we spent the evening—and night—enjoying her last night there. She hadn’t been kidding when she told me she wanted to experience some of the scenes she’d read about. Once we finished something from one book, she’d go through another and have me read it, and then we’d enact that as well. Some of them I had to take it a little bit easier on her, since I knew she wasn’t that experienced, but she seemed to enjoy everything I gave her. And I certainly enjoyed everything she gave me as well. One of those things was her very first blowjob. She was so hot with my dick in her mouth, I almost came instantaneously. I couldn’t even imagine what she’d do to me once she gained more practice, and I couldn’t wait to teach her everything she didn’t know.

We fell asleep sometime in the very early morning hours, curled up in each other on her bed. And then woke the next morning to start moving her in to my house. So much of my darkness had faded, and I could see the same reflected in her eyes. I saw happiness in her smiles, and I was sure mine were the same.

We were turning the page on a chapter in our lives, and I couldn’t wait until the next one began.

“Ivy, come on, we’re going to be late,” I called to her as I walked into our home office and found her behind her desk with her face in front of her e-reader.

After she moved in a little over a month ago, I had turned my gym into an office for both of us. My desk was on one side of the room and hers was on the other, facing the door. I didn’t seem to need the punching bag anymore; ever since Ivy came into my life, my anger issues were gradually dissipating, but I didn’t want to get rid of
all
my equipment. So I kept my row machine and a weight bench in the far corner. I actually enjoyed the evenings when I’d work out while she sat at her computer and did whatever she needed to for work.

Ivy was amazing. Since moving in, she had kept herself rather busy with the book stuff she did. She designed some of the most beautiful things, and had even used a picture of me for one of her cover designs. You couldn’t tell it was me, though. It was of my back while I was stretching after a workout. But I must say, it looked pretty good.

“I’m almost done with this chapter, Cade. Just let me finish and I’ll be ready.”

“No.” I stepped into the room and stood in front of her desk with my hands splayed out on the top, hovering over her. “Your doctor’s appointment is in thirty-five minutes, and it’s thirty minutes away. You can finish it in the car.” I knew she was stalling, I just wasn’t sure why.

“It’s fine; I’ll just reschedule,” she said without even looking up.

I took the tablet from her hands against her loud protests, and pulled her from her chair. “Why are you fighting this so much? Why don’t you want to go? I told you I’d be there with you. I even took the afternoon off for this.”

She closed her eyes and released a deep sigh. “I don’t want her to look at me there.”

I walked around the desk and stood in front of her, holding onto her shoulders and tilting her body so that she’d have no option but to look at me. “I don’t understand. I thought we worked through that fear? Does that still bother you? And when are you going to stop referring to your pussy as ‘there’?”

“Of course it still bothers me, Cade. It will probably always bother me. And the P word is meant for the bedroom, when it doesn’t sound so bad. I’d say vagina, but every time I do, your eyes light up—just like they’re doing right now.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it if I lusted after my woman as much as I loved her—which was a lot and all the time. My smile fell when my brain returned to the original issue, her fear. “But you’re fine when I look at you. I thought you said I saved you.”

“You did… you saved me for yourself. Even if we had kept our relationship professional and you ended up clearing me, I don’t think it would have made any difference when it came to others. With you, I’m fine, but not so much with other people—man or woman.”

We had never talked about what would have happened if I didn’t knock her door down and convince her to come back with me. It always worried me that one day she’d wonder what it would be like to explore relationships with other people. She had only been with two men before me, and neither of them brought emotion to the table. But hearing her admit to me that she still hated the idea of being looked at by anyone but me, as sick as it sounds, gave me an ego boost. It went both ways, though. I still hated the idea of fucking anyone but Ivy on a bed or sleeping with my arms tenderly wrapped around anyone but her. So I guess it was fair.

“Well, regardless, you have an appointment to get to. So come on.” I pulled her by her arm lovingly until she was following me on her own. “Just close your eyes and pretend I’m the one between your legs. I’d talk dirty to you while she’s doing her thing if it’d help convince you, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it.”

“It might help explain why we’re there,” she teased as we walked out to the car.

I waited until we were both buckled in and the engine started to purr before commenting. “You’re going there to get birth control; I don’t think she needs to hear me talk dirty to you to figure out why we need it.” Almost two weeks to the day after Ivy moved in, she had started her period. It was a weird day since she had nearly convinced us both that she was indeed pregnant, by sheer paranoia alone. There was nothing to back up her theory, other than the obvious, but she was almost certain of it—because it happened in books, I suppose. But once we realized she wasn’t, we were both quiet and full of thought.

Honestly, I was relieved that she wasn’t. I didn’t want that kind of pressure on us so early in our relationship. We were still getting to know one another, and working out the kinks of living with someone else. The last thing we needed to add to that adjustment was a baby. But at the same time, I had gotten used to the idea of having a family with Ivy. And that was the sad part. But at least we knew we had plenty of time for that. When I thought of life with Ivy, there was no doubt in my mind that it was for eternity. I couldn’t imagine life without her.

After the pregnancy scare, we had concluded that it would be a good idea for Ivy to get on birth control. Condoms were the last thing on my mind once she was naked, and the way she clenched around my dick as she came made it extremely difficult to have enough thought in my head to pull out. It was safest if we found a new safer form of birth control, one that I couldn’t forget to wear while in the heat of the moment.

Ivy decided to go with some ring that she put inside of her every month so that she wouldn’t have to bother with remembering to take a daily pill. I didn’t care what she went with, as long as it meant I could come inside of her and not have to watch her freak out every month. 

It pained me to watch her squirm on the table as the doctor performed her exam. It was obvious by the expressions evident on Ivy’s face how uncomfortable she was, and when Ivy was in pain, I immediately wanted to jump into protective mode. But I couldn’t do this for her, it was something she had to face head on and she did. No matter how awkward Ivy was, she was determined to get through the exam. The doctor did ask her once about the scarring, but I broke in and answered as clinically as I could in order to keep Ivy from having to go through the explanation again. The thankful look in her eyes was all I needed to tell me I had made the right decision. I would have her back and she’d have mine. There was a suffocating silence that filled the examination room after my explanation, but I guess that was to be expected. It was an astonishing story. But it brought back everything I had felt after she told me her story, and I could tell she was also reliving the emotions she had gone through. I kissed the back of her hand and continued to hold onto it in order to offer her a sense of security. But who was I kidding. I wanted to feel her hand in mine for my own security as well.  I have no idea what the doctor thought during the rest of the examination since my attention was on my Ivy, and I wasn’t going to break that for anything.

The appointment didn’t last that long, thank God, and once we were finished, we headed back home. I was officially starting my new practice the following week. I had been busy getting everything in order to start up my new venture. By some miracle, my calendar was full and I had made the decision to hire an assistant after realizing I now had a reason to be home after office hours and didn’t want to waste a single moment going through the office bills or returning phone calls when I could be spending that time with Ivy. But with all of that going on, I hadn’t been able to just curl up on the couch and watch TV with her. So that’s what we did when we got home.

We watched some romantic comedy that Ivy wanted to see, but I barely paid any attention to it. I was too busy watching her. The way her lips curled up at the corners when she thought something was sweet made my heart feel full. The way her top lip moved over her imperfect incisors and her chest vibrated slightly when she thought something was funny made me smile. And the way her eyebrows pinched together during an intense scene made me want to kiss her forehead until all of the tension was gone. I had learned so much about Ivy over the month we had been living together, but nothing made me see her more clearly than watching her reactions to the things around her or the unconscious facial expressions during a movie. I could have watched her all fucking day long, every single day and still learned something new about her.

The most important thing I had learned was that Ivy would always get what she wanted when it came to me. It didn’t take long before she had made her presence in my house known. It was very clear that it was no longer
my
house… it was
our
house. That was an adjustment since neither one of us had ever lived with anyone. But we were slowly amending our ways. The first adjustment came just a week after she had moved in when I came home to a newly decorated bedroom. Somehow, in a matter of about eight hours, she had stripped my room of every ounce of masculinity. She had replaced the grey and white stripes with light and dark blue roses. And then she found matching accents to put on the walls. I told her if she ever told anyone our bedroom was decorated with flowers, I’d change it all to black and throw some football Fatheads on the walls. She just giggled and continued on, knowing I’d give into anything she desired. I’d do just about anything to see that smile, including living in a feminine house.

We had both lived separately for so long that we had certain rules and habits we’d grown accustomed to and now had to sort out. Ivy constantly left the cap off the tube of toothpaste and I never put the toilet seat down after I peed. I wasn’t a messy person by any means, but I was never the kind of guy that would put something away immediately. I’d leave an empty beer bottle on the counter for a few hours before throwing it away; that bothered her almost as much as the toilet seat. And she had this really bad habit of leaving her bras hanging in the laundry room to dry—apparently putting them in the dryer is a big no-no. Needless to say, it was taking us both time to adjust to the other person, but I wouldn’t have expected it any other way.

After we had been living together about three weeks, I came home to find my laundry had been done. She had, somehow, managed to dye all of my white work shirts light pink. She was devastated over this, but I muffled my laughter long enough to tell her I loved them. Now, every time I wore them, I would think of her. Especially because I made her wear them from time to time—unbuttoned with nothing else on. There was just something about that woman in my shirts that fucking drove me crazy, and I was slowly understanding why people chose this kind of life. Even though we had been through countless changes, I still would never opt to live with anyone but Ivy.

Don’t get me wrong. We still struggled with the demons that haunted us both. But we were there for each other when rough times rocked our foundation. I couldn’t remember the last time I had suffered from a panic attack. Ivy was doing just as well. Her newfound confidence was evident in everything she did. And the way she handled me on the nights the bedsprings got just a little too loud… I couldn’t have ever asked for anything more.

I hadn’t even realized the credits were rolling on the TV in front of me. I had been too occupied by watching her and too deep in my thoughts.  It was still hard to imagine how much we had gone through to get where we were, holding each other on the couch with no demons in sight. This would have never been a possibility for either of us a month ago. It was truly amazing.

Ivy spun in my arms, locking her eyes with mine. “That movie made me think…”

I waited for her to continue, but she never did. I huffed a laugh and kissed her forehead. “And what did it make you think of?” I prodded her. That was one of the things her confidence still faltered. She would always hesitate a little at first when she wanted to share something with me, especially if it was important to her. But it was taking less and less prodding to get her to open up. We trusted each other.

She took in a deep breath, releasing it against my neck, and pulled herself closer. “Well, things were really weird there for a little while after I had my period. And we never really discussed it. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on it. You seemed really quiet for a few days.”

“Ivy, you just started birth control and as much as I’d love to have a family with you, I don’t think this is the right time to do that.”

“I know,” she interjected. “That’s not what I’m saying. I agree, it’s definitely not the right time. I’m finally finding out who I am as a person, but it still made me think, that’s all. I mean, we’ve talked about wanting a family at some point… but I have no idea what
some point
means to you. Is it in five years? Ten? Don’t you think that’s something we should talk about? Where we see ourselves in the near and distant future?”