AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then one night she turned up in London. Walked straight into a rager. Instead of throwing a fit and everyone out, she got involved.” His eyes close in disgust at either himself or her, I am not sure which. Maybe both. “Gabe, me, her, and a few others. I was so fucking high I never questioned it when she pulled out the condoms. I knew she’d fucked Gabe at university, so I just went with it. She told me she’d do whatever it took to be with me, and if that meant having sex with others, she’d do it. To be honest, I didn’t care who she fucked. I wanted her over and done with.” His lips curl and his head is moving side to side.
“Jesus, Kell, what a mess. But it’s not just you to blame. Everyone makes terrible decisions under that amount of stress.”
“Not even you can take the blame away. And believe me, I tried to not blame myself, but even I know it was partly my fault.” He takes a breath in and goes on.
“The next day, I told her that regardless of what she was prepared to do, I wanted a divorce. She was distraught, went on and on about the night before. How amazing it had been between us. I can’t even remember that night. None of it beyond us all walking into that fucking room, and her whipping the condoms out and her clothes off.” His face is a picture of disgust, eyebrows down, nose wrinkled, lip curled upwards. But it’s all aimed inwards at himself.
“I contacted the lawyers that day and flew back out to LA, leaving my family and hers sniping at each other. Drugs became my friend, drink and women my go-to. I was rock and roll again, baby. Anything I wanted to do, I did it. Anything I wanted, I reached out and took it.”
I hold onto his hand, “I saw those headlines too,” I confirm.
Then he says, “There’s more. And I’d like to say it gets better, but it probably doesn’t.”
“Kellen, you don’t have to say anything else if you don’t want to.”
He gives me a small smile. “You may as well hear it all now, the truth. Not the ridiculous headlines everyone conjured up.” I nod and hold onto him, stroking his face. “Don’t pity me, Evie. I don’t think I could stand that.”
“I don’t. I empathise, one parent to another.” He looks me in the eyes, kisses my forehead. Pressing on into hell.
“She turned up in LA eight weeks later. Early pregnancy test results in her hands, along with a fucking recording of our orgy. Fucking pregnant AGAIN. I went ballistic, but she threatened if I didn’t go along with the ‘happy news’ she’d post that shitty recording. I reminded her she was in it, but she pointed out her face was never in shot. She was right about that. I was a fucking zombie. We flew back to London together and I stood there and allowed myself to be photographed with our ecstatic families, Caroline glowing.
“As soon as the camera was off, I got high. I got wasted. I fucked as many women as I could to numb out the intolerable agony, just waiting for that call. Sixteen fucking weeks and it finally came. I never even made it to the hospital. I only made the service for the burial because Xander picked me up off the floor of a drug den and delivered me to it. I could hardly stand.
“We divorced twelve months later. I tried to help her, but she cut me off. Ended all communications with me. But her family sure wanted their pound of flesh. Used the media to destroy me. Wasn’t I destroyed enough? She wanted nothing to do with me, fine. But how could she do that to me? I’d been upfront about what I wanted, how I wanted to live, she just didn’t believe me, did not fucking listen. Only interested in having an heir for my fucking title, her family desperate to be connected to an estate, their daughter a countess.” His voice is flat, his eyes black holes in his face as he whispers, “She died three months later. I was twenty-five fucking years old.”
His eyes have taken on a dazed look as he peers backwards into his past hell, but he goes on. “I tried to move on, but her family were vicious, and did everything to put me in a bad light in the press and TV. To be honest, most of what they said was probably true at the time. I’d left her alone to deal with the miscarriage and sort out the service. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t. I’d nothing left to give. Four innocent babies dead, because of me I assumed. Her family blaming my party lifestyle told the fucking world of my constant drug use. My self medicating techniques. But what if it wasn’t that- something more fundamental, a problem with me physically. I was too scared to find out, the kicking her family had given me, I couldn’t cope with the reality. So I did nothing.” He pauses and peers down through his lashes at me.
“And then you turn up,” he shakes his head in amazement, “full of life and light, with an eighteen-year-old, strapping, alive-and-kicking son. My fucking son. Evie, I will do anything to help that boy. I can’t promise to play nice with your brothers, but I will move heaven and earth for James.” He looks down at me, and I reach up and brush the hair away from his forehead, trailing my fingers across his eyebrows. Every true word he’s said is written in his beautiful eyes.
“I’ll even rein in my ego,” he rolls his eyes at that, “maybe.”
I start to laugh and he smiles at me, but his face changes as he carries on looking at me. Bending his head down, his lips inches from mine, he asks, “Can I kiss you, E?”
I nod and breathe out the word ‘yes’ as he moves gently towards me, placing his lips on mine.
The electric current that’s been simmering away for the past hour as we gently touched each other, giving comfort, cranks up to full voltage when his lips hit mine. I shift in my seat to get closer to him and he pulls me in, a growl rumbling from the back of his throat. If I were standing, my legs would have given out.
The kiss is intense and full on, exceeding even the reunion kiss at the Green Dragon. I extend my head back and to the side, giving him better access as he moves his lips to my cheeks, nose, eyes and down my neck. He skims his hands down my body, touching my breasts as he goes, his feral groan setting my skin on fire.
“So beautiful,” he breathes out. His hands move down towards my legs as his mouth returns to mine, and I nearly jump off the seat when his warm, callused fingers hit my thighs and he strokes down my legs.
“Kellen,” I breathe out, “we have to stop.”
“No, Evie, we don’t. Stay with me here tonight, one night.” He moves his hand northwards under my dress. “Say yes, Evie. Don’t let your Greystone brain take over. No strings, just pleasure.” I feel him smile into my mouth as he says it. “I want you, Evie. Say yes.”
I touch his legs and move my hand over his fly. It’s bulging, his cock desperately trying to get out.
“See how hard you make me all the fucking time? Say yes, E.”
I’m so torn. I want him as well, badly. He looks drunk, and I probably have the same glazed and languid look on my face, even though we’ve only had one drink, if that.
“You have to be sure. Don’t come with me if you’re not. I want to fuck you into next week. I want to fuck you so hard you’ll feel me even though I’m in LA. I want to taste you, lick you from front to back. Don’t say yes unless you’re sure. I won’t be able to hold back, it’s not who I am. I want to fuck you everywhere. Pussy, ass, mouth. Let me give you pleasure, Evie. I promise I can give you that.”
I have lost my mind. Whatever happened to making love and cuddles? But my vagina is clearly not interested in those lovely soft words. She’s throbbing and clenching on thin air. She wants all the dirty things he’s promising, and more.
He looks at me, his eyes black, his pupils blown wide, and I look back at him, steadily moving my legs wider. His hand is still under my dress. He looks down at my movement and up at my face.
“Yes,” I surrender.
