I could remember every moment of this man’s life as vividly as my own. I’d taken those memories out countless times in the past eight months, worn ’em smooth with use, warped with sorrow.
And now, the dream’a every parent who ever suffered the tragedy’a losin’ a kid, I was holdin’ that baby, that boy, that man in my arms.
Could feel his heart pump hard against my chest, his breath in my hair, his body against my own.
And fuck me, I cried.
Oh yeah.
The both of us.
Strange for grown men, maybe, but reduced to it by the enormity of our relief as we loosened our grip on the pain’a loss and mournin’, on the agony’a bein’ parted, of believin’ ourselves lost to the other.
Fuck me, but we cried loud and long.
Men in their unusual outpourin’a grief, so much less elegant than our women.
We didn’t care.
There was snot on my shirt, tears in our hair, rough in our swollen throats.
It hurt to purge, but in its wake, minutes later, still clutched together ’cause honest to fuck, wasn’t sure how I’d ever let him go again, peace like I’d never known before descended.
King breathed deep, shudderin’ on the exhale, then pulled back enough to smile at me with his wet, red face and aged eyes. “Hey, Dad.”
“Welcome home, King,” I told him, clappin’ him hard on the back, then grabbin’ his neck to press his forehead to mine so he’d know I was on his side, always on his side, when I said, “Brace, son, for a rocky return. Lotta grief goin’ even eight months on.”
He sighed. “Yeah, gotta say it makes a man feel just as good as bad.”
“You bought it,” I reminded him.
“And I’ll earn their forgiveness,” he retorted easily. “Did it with my babe Cress, and one by fuckin’ one, I’ll do whatever it takes to win back the hearts of our family and Fallen.”
I snorted softly, joy startin’ to bubble up in the wake of shock, anger, and sadness. “Fuck me, but I won’t ever doubt your resolve again, that’s for damn sure.”
And then we laughed.
Quiet, short laughter that felt like wakin’ from a dream only to realize real life was just as fuckin’ beautiful.
“Proud as fuck to be your dad,” I told him gruffly, seein’ the sentiment echoed back in his face. “But prepare, I’m not lettin’ you outta my damn sight for a long fuckin’ while, and you bought that too.”
A smile, the first genuine one I’d seen. “Gotta few people to see ’fore I come back tonight. Cress heard you were gettin’ together for a kinda celebration of my birthday here tonight. Figured I could be the guest of honour.”
I shook my head, but of course, a son’a mine would have balls’a fuckin’ steel. “You’re sister’s gonna kill ya, you don’t see her ’fore that. Even then, you might be dead ’fore dark.”
King chuckled as he moved a step back, eyes fuckin’ sparklin’. “I’m thinkin’ her anger won’t last long when she sees what else I’ve brought home with me.”
On cue, the back door to the cabin creaked open and slammed shut.
My head jerked up immediately.
’Cause there was no King without his Queenie.
Shoulda known she’d be there somewhere, but the return’a my son from the dead had been too big to see beyond.
This though, seein’ Cressida Garro smilin’ as she moved down the porch, full’a joy for the first time since King had ‘died’, seein’ her for the first time since she left months ago to flee her grief, this was mammoth.
’Cause it wasn’t just his wife my son had returned with.
But a baby.
I stared fuckin’ dumbstruck at the massive swell of Cressida’s belly, contrastin’ with her slim form as she moved down the stairs and over the grass to her husband’s side. King wrapped an arm around her, tuckin’ her into his side where she belonged.
They both grinned at each other, then at her belly, then at me.
“You ready to be a grandpa with two twin babies just born?” King teased.
I blinked at them, my kids returned to me even more beautiful somehow than they’d been before, and then I threw my head back on a roar of laughter at the grace of the fuckin’ world sometimes and charged forward to hug my boy and his girl and their future kid to me like I’d never fuckin’ let them go.
Harleigh Rose
“That’s it,” Lion growled softly as he leaned back on his corded forearms, hands fisted in the tousled bedsheets, feet braced on the floor so he could watch me as I moved over him. “Work for it, Rosie.”
“I am,” I whined, churning my hips as hard as I could with my thighs draped over his spread legs, his thick length impaling me as I straddled him and worked to bring myself to orgasm without the needed leverage to make it quick.
We’d been at it for almost an hour.
I was slick with sweat, my hair damp as it slapped against my back and breasts as I thrust eagerly back and forth, only an inch of that thick cock sliding in and out of me, his tip pressed almost cruelly to the end of my cunt, a slightly painful contrast to my pleasure that set my teeth on edge and my scalp to prickling.
There was a sharp sting as Lion spanked me and drawled coldly, “Work harder and I might be influenced to help you come. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You love to drench my cock in your sweet cum.”
“Yes,” I hissed as I threw my head back, braced my hands on his thighs even though it was against the rules, and slammed myself down on his steely length. “Please, please, please…” I chanted, wheeling through the lovely dark of subspace, lost to sensation and the power of Lion’s commands. “Please, sir, let me come for you.”
“Well,” he hummed dispassionately, as if we were having a casual conversation and I wasn’t writhing on his lap. “You ask so damn pretty.”
I gasped as he knifed up and curled around my back, one hand weighing my tit, rolling my nipple, while the other arrowed over my quivering belly to the apex of my sex, thumb and forefinger pinching at my swollen clit viciously.
Simultaneously, he whispered hotly in my ear, “Come for me, my good little slut.”
And I broke.
Shattered.
Went to hot, jagged pieces carved up by the sharp knife of pleasure and its keen edge of pain.
Vaguely, I was aware of jerking hard around his driving dick, of his hands pinning me down so he could fuck even harder up into my clasping, leaking cunt, and then the exquisite sound of his manly grunt as he succumbed to his own climax and filled me with his cum.
Slowly, gingerly, like a feather caught on a downward draft, I spiralled back to earth.
Lion was cradling me now, his nose in the hair over my ear, breathing me in like oxygen.
“You happy?” he asked in a sex-roughened voice.
He asked me often. Because he’d made a promise to me when we finally found each other, committed to our crazy, all-consuming love for each other, that after all the tears and chaos, we would have our happily ever after.
And we did.
We lived it every single fucking day under the roof of our renovated ranch house with our precious German Shepherd puppy, Saint. I had a good job I loved at the hospital, and Lion was happier as a private investigator than he’d ever been as a cop.