A Forever Love (17 page)

“Leo gets back from Dubai next week. Devon and Anthony will be there too. Max and I would stay in New York for a week. I’ll do half days so he can see the office, get a feel for what I do. Meet his three uncles who he’s never met, and then we’ll go to the Hamptons for a week.”

“Just what I want. My kid surrounded by the rich and entitled.”

“Aubrey, you know not everyone in that world is as bad as you think, just like every person in Hudson isn’t an uneducated hick.”

“Hmm, your tune has changed since you’ve arrived.”

“And yours since you left New York.”

Silence surrounded them. Even with the discord, even with the tension, he wanted to reach out and pull her near to him. To press his lips to hers. They’d not spent time alone since Max returned from Camp Willow, and while logically his mind understood the reasons why and yes, that it made perfect sense as Aubrey had said to not muddy the waters. His body didn’t think those were good reasons at all. He leaned forward, then reached out and pressed his hand to her cheek. Her eyes still remained fixed to the horizon.

“Aubrey, please, let me show him my life. Let me show him my world. Let him meet the rest of his family.”

She dropped her gaze, then her eyes locked with his. “You’re right.” She twisted her glass in her hands. “Of course you’re right. He should spend the rest of the summer with you, but after his enrichment program finishes. Could you … would you try to remember that while he’s visited cities, he’s not …” She glanced away toward the horizon again. “He’s not really ever been on his own in one. This will be new to him, and while he’s starting to look like a man, and sometimes he even sounds like one, that still …” She looked at him. “Still, he’s my little boy.”

“Yes,” Justin said. “Yes, I will remember.” A smile split his face. “You’re never as beautiful as when you’re being my son’s protective mother.”

Even through the darkness he could see her cheeks pinken, and her head ducked a bit with his words.

“Aubrey, you are a tremendous woman.” The heat was building in him. The idea that she was the protective mama bear to his son excited him. He leaned forward and his lips grazed hers.

She didn’t pull back; instead, she leaned in. He took her glass from her hands and set it beside his on the flat surface of the ground. His hands were on her cheeks and her breath came in short bursts. His lips slid open to hers, and her tongue darted into his mouth, and her hand pressed to his chest. She pulled at the bottom of his T-shirt, and it was up and over his head. The warmth of her hands pressed to his flesh even while a cool breeze prickled his skin. He pressed her back onto the blanket, and his hands slowly unbuttoned her shirt, his lips on her neck.

“Oh Justin,” she whispered and her hips thrust up.

His fingertip circled her pert nipple, and he unfastened the front clasp of her bra before pulling her nipple into his mouth. He pressed his hand down over her belly and then unbuttoned her skirt, pulling it over her hips. Now only her panties lay between them. Her hand roamed his flesh, and then one circled around his neck and up through his hair.

This all-consuming heat … He wanted her. He wanted to be inside her, deep in the warmth of her body. His fingers slipped underneath her panties and his fingertip circled the wet nub as her breath hitched in her chest.

“Yes, oh, yes.” Her hands found the top of his jeans and unbuttoned them, then she pulled them from his hips and her hand grasped his sex. She slid her hands up and down with a tight grip while his finger continued to massage her clit. He slid two fingers into her wet sex, pulsing in and out. Her breath grew shorter, her hands sliding over his cock more insistently.

“Please, Justin, please. I want you.”

He shucked his jeans off his body and spread her legs, then dipped his mouth to her sex. With a lick, he stroked over her already willing sex as he pulled the slick nub into his mouth and sucked that sweet spot that gave her pleasure.

“Justin.” Her sex tightened, and she was over the edge. He watched those beautiful breasts in the moonlight, her face split with desire and satisfaction as with his mouth he took her over and over and over again. Then she pulled at his hair, her hands needy. She pulled him up to her lips, and he kissed her, the sweetness of her juices still on his lips.

“I want you in me, please. Now, please.”

He pressed up onto his forearm, and his cock pressed to the tight spot of her sex. He looked into her eyes as she lay beneath him in the light of the moon and the stars, her skin alabaster and those green eyes that seemed to capture his soul glittering. He pressed forward, and in one long, hard stroke sank himself hip deep into her sex. She curled up and grasped his shoulders.

“Oh my God. Yes, yes, that feels so good.”

He pulled back, all the while their gazes locked with each other, their eyes seeing each other through the pleasure of this moment, this night, this new world. They were forever linked by a son, a human life they had made and she had borne, and this was what they were, now and forever.

“My God, Aubrey, oh my God.” He stroked in and then back out. He pulled her pleasure and extended his own. There wasn’t much time. Days of being with her and seeing her and smelling her and not having her … She had taunted him in his dreams, and now she lay beneath him, her body soft and yielding and open to him. No, he would not have much time. He pressed forward again and his mouth was on hers, consuming and taking and trying to say all the things they couldn’t seem to find the right words for. He thrust up and then back, and her body tightened around his shaft.

“I’m oh, my God, Justin, I’m—”

“Let go, Aubrey, let go.”

She was over the edge, and he pushed deep into her again, her sex pulling around him tighter and harder, and he’d lost his rhythm and he pressed in and out, his lips on hers. “I’m going to—

“Yes, baby, I am too.” He thrust deep inside her, the come ripping through his body tearing out his soul and blasting into her. Her body shuddered in his arms, and he buried his face in her shoulder and trembled. Her entire body clasped around his.

This is where he could remain for a lifetime. Here. Inside Aubrey, with her surrounding his body, his mind, his entire being. Beneath the stars with Aubrey in his arms for the rest of his life.

“Your dad and I were talking.” Aubrey licked her lips. As much as she knew this trip would be good for Max and good for Justin and great for their relationship, the words were difficult to stay. She glanced toward Justin and he nodded, his smile a reminder that this trip would be fun for father and son. “Your dad and I were talking, and we both think it’d be great once your enrichment program is finished if you spend two weeks in New York.”

Max’s eyes widened. He glanced from his mom to Justin. His jaw dropped, almost as though he couldn’t believe the words he’d heard.

“Me?” He pressed his hand to his chest. “Me, in New York? With Dad?”

Pain sliced her chest, and yet there was joy there too. “Yes. Do you want to go?”

Max jumped up from his chair. “Are you kidding? Of course I want to go. Really? No kidding? I’m going to New York? Mom, you’re not joking, right?”

“No joke,” she said.

His joy was infectious, and she decided to ride the wave of Max’s happiness instead of wallowing in the self-pity she felt. Two weeks without Max? She’d just suffered through one week without him for the first time when he went to Camp Willow, and that was camp in the middle of Kansas. Now she had to deal with the anxiety-producing idea of Max in New York City without her?

“Man, this is awesome!” He pumped his fist in the air and jumped around like a little kid, not the cool, nonchalant soon-to-be high schooler he attempted to be most times.

“We leave in a week,” Justin said. “I’ve promised your mother vegetables, bedtimes, and not too many video games.”

“I am totally down with all of that.” Max turned to his mom and bounded around the dining room table toward her. “Mom, this is awesome.”

He clasped her in a giant hug, and his strength, the weight of him, the
masculinity
of his being, shocked her. He would always be her little boy, but his hug … There was so much strength.

“Okay, gotta tell the guys.” He bolted through the living room and thundered up the stairs before pounding to his room.

“That went well.” Aubrey turned toward the kitchen.

Justin followed her around the corner, a smile on his face. “You thought it wouldn’t? I mean, a fourteen-year-old boy going on a surprise trip to New York for the first time? What wouldn’t go well?”

Aubrey shrugged. She lifted the kettle from the stove and filled it with tap water. Her lips thinned. Maybe a part of her had hoped a piece of Max would hesitate, that he’d look to her and ask if it was really okay that he left her here, in Kansas, alone. She set the kettle on the stove.

“Hey.” Justin slid his arm around her waist and turned her body toward his. He pressed his forehead to hers. “He’ll miss you.” His teeth nibbled at the corner of her mouth. “We’ll both miss you.”

She closed her eyes, and for a moment relaxed into his arms and his kiss. She wanted this, these moments with Justin, and yet she was conflicted, confused. She pulled away from his embrace. “Did he say anything to you about his last name?”

Justin took a deep breath and fought the grin at the corner of his mouth. “He wants to change it to Travati.”

Aubrey nodded. “Of course he does,” she mumbled and opened the cabinet to pull out the tea. She was losing. She really couldn’t win. First the trip and then his name, the luxurious lifestyle with the private plane and the penthouse and the swank home in Lake Como, Italy. How could a farm in Kansas and a mom with a herd of dairy cows compete with all of that?

“I thought … I thought you’d be happy that things are going so smoothly. I thought you agreed Max needs a father.”

“I did agree, I do agree.” She fumbled with the box of tea. “Dammit, I do want him to be happy.” She tossed the box onto the counter, frustrated, then crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not just coming with you to New York,” she spit out. “He’s leaving me behind.”

“Come with us,” Justin said. He inched forward, closer to her.

Again with that masculine, musky scent and those broad shoulders and that smile, his damn smile. He pulled her into him, against his body, against his arousal, his touch defusing her temper.

“I can’t come with you,” Aubrey said. She placed her hands flat on his chest between them. “I have a business to run.”

“When was your last vacation?”

Aubrey rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “Hmm, I think the first year I worked for you.”

“I’d say you’re due for another.”

She pressed back, away from his grasp, and turned back to the box of tea. “No can do. Would take weeks of work for me to leave.” She pulled two mugs from the cabinet. “This is your time with Max. I’m just”—she set the pillow teabags into each mug—“I’m just going to miss him.” Her voice trembled. She wasn’t just afraid that she would miss him now, but that this absence would be the beginning of Max being gone for forever. She poured hot water into each cup.

“I know. He’ll miss you too. He’s already told me that should he get to visit me that he’s worried to leave you.”

“Me? Not much happens here at Rockwater Farms. Why would he be worried to leave me?”

“Well, for starters, he’s afraid your having to do his chores is way too much work for you.”

“Right.” Aubrey pulled the honey from the cabinet. “Like I haven’t done that before.”

“Then, as he says, there’s his cranky grandpa.”

Aubrey turned toward Justin. “His words, not mine. Dad’s just a little—”

“Cranky?” Justin cocked an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

Justin tilted his head.

“Okay, yes, Dad can be cranky, but he always has time for Max.”

“I know, and Max always has time for him too. But he’s worried to leave him alone with only you and Nina because he knows how hard you two work.”

Aubrey lifted the teabag from each cup and set them on a small plate, then added honey.

“And that is exactly why I’ll miss my boy,” Aubrey said. She lifted a cup, turned to Justin, and handed it to him. “Because he’s thoughtful, and kind, and wonderful, and not long ago, as wrong as it was, and I know it was wrong, he was all mine.”

A flash in Justin’s eye passed quickly. Was he humoring her? Most likely yes. “Think of me as a welcome addition, not a burden.”

“You are, this is. I know all these things are good for Max, really I do. It’s just … Oh Justin, I’m sorry,” Aubrey said and set her tea down on the counter. “This is happening so fast for him, for you, for me.”

“You seem to be the only one having a problem with the changes.”

Heat built in Aubrey’s chest. “Yes. Yes, maybe I am, but I’m also the one who has dedicated my entire existence to raising Max. Granted, that was my choice, and of course I know I made a grievous mistake not telling you about your son, and for that I will always be sorry. But dammit, I’ve done a fine job in getting him to this age, and now you’re just going to swoop in here with your private jets and sports-star friends and Hamptons home and billions of dollars and steal my son.”

Justin lips thinned and he set his mug on the counter. “
Our
son.”

“What about it? Our son, I said our son.”

“No, Aubrey, you didn’t. You said
my
son.”

“Semantics,” Aubrey said. She turned away and grabbed for the towel beside the kitchen sink.

“Think I’ll head back to my suite. Mind if Max stays in the extra room at my place tonight?”

“Why not,” Aubrey said, her voice petulant. “He’ll be staying with you every night soon enough.”

She didn’t turn to Justin. Instead, she wiped the counters and listened to his heavy footfalls as he climbed the old staircase and walked down the hall to Max’s room. Then there was silence, and she realized that soon, very soon, silence would be the only sound she would hear in this old farmhouse.

*

“So you’re letting the man from the city take your son.”