The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) (3 page)

As the login launched, she wondered if she needed to pay taxes on the money he had given her. She supposed now that they were married, she would not. Oh shit, what would that do to her tax liability. It was going to throw her into a higher bracket. Damn it. She’s already earned six months’ income, how would she come up with the money to make up the difference? Maybe he’d agree to file separately. Then it occurred to her that she would have legal custody of Lotus and Reina, and maybe even Cody. She could write them off this year. She had never even claimed Cody before because she didn’t know if she could. She just paid the taxes of a single person.

Finally, her account came up and she stared at the balance. The sum came to ten grand minus the thirty dollars she had spent on the fajitas.

Rather than calm her fears about money, it amplified them. The members of her family were all addicts. What if she became a shopaholic? How long was this money supposed to last her? With no rent or utilities to pay, she could probably make it last at least a year. Hell, she could make that much last longer than that. It would be such a temptation to break her $2 rule. She only purchased garage sale clothing if it cost $2 or less. Maybe it would be all right now if she spent $4 to $5 on special garments.

But that was the way it started, wasn’t it?

Christ. She just wanted to buy her brother a fucking balloon. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

~*~

Nyxie stood outside Cody’s room, girding herself for what she would find inside. Now that he was off the ventilator, she could get a greater sense for how severe his brain was damaged. She painted on a smile and wrangled the three balloons through the door. One boldly colored Mylar balloon with the words, “Get Well Soon,” and two latex balloons, were tied to a small weight that looked like a little shiny present. The gift shop carried a large BMX bike balloon that would have easily been her first choice for Cody a month earlier, but now she could barely look at the thing.

He was asleep when she walked in, but her movements awakened him. He grinned at her with a crooked smile that showed weakness from the brain injury on one side. But it also showed her that her little brother was still in there somewhere. He didn’t speak, but he stared up at the balloons.

“Hey, Cody! Sorry, it took so long for me to get here. It was a crazy morning.” She placed the weight on the rolling tray table so he would be able to see the balloons easily. “How do you feel?”

He lifted his right hand weakly in a seesaw motion, which appeared to have exhausted him, if the way his armed dropped back to the mattress like dead weight was any indication. She forced herself to act cheerful, as if seeing him so ill, didn’t rip out her heart.

“I bet.” She set down her overnight bag and purse, and fished out Cody’s new cell phone. “Declan bought us all cell phones. I think Lotus and Reina have sent you messages.” She clicked into his texts. “Do you want me to read them to you, or do you want to read them yourself?” she asked, holding the phone toward him. When he didn’t reach for the phone, she began reading each one in the order it came in. They were pretty much what Nyxie expected. Little greetings of:

I miss u.

R U OK?

Please txt me when u read this.

Mostly they were messages saying
hi
. They also sent little selfies and a couple of short videos. It broke her heart to see Lotus apologizing because she forgot to call 911, and Reina saying she was having bad dreams almost every night about the truck hitting him.

Cody fell asleep before they had finished watching the videos, and Nyxie sent off a response to each girl to let them know Cody had seen them.

During his long, frequent naps, Nyxie spent her day wading through the online parenting classes and taking tests. Good information was sprinkled in with a lot of common sense stuff. Much of it would have been helpful when Cody was little.

Chapter 3

Declan entered the pediatric wing around 9:30. It was his first break since they arrived. He stopped by the nurses’ station, and looked at Cody’s chart as he took the last few bites of a sandwich he had scrounged up. Having never seen Declan before, the nurses eyed the young doctor speculatively.

“No more seizures?” he asked the nurse who had given him the folder.

“No, doctor,” she said. “Are you a new pediatric resident?”

“Surgery, for the moment,” he answered, handing the chart back. He wanted to ask them to take extra special care of Cody, but to say so, might imply they didn’t always do their best. He thought about telling them Cody was his brother-in-law, but after the conversation with Nyxie, he wasn’t sure if she would tell her brother. “Thank you for taking care of him. He’s very special to someone special to me.”

~*~

The lights of the room were dimmed when Declan entered, and he was surprised to find Nyxie stretched out in bed with Cody. She laid with her back against the rail, taking up no more room than necessary. His IV lines had been carefully moved out of the way, and Nyxie and Cody slept holding hands. The little stuffed animal he had found while cleaning out the garage apartment was tucked under Cody’s broken arm.

The nurses wouldn’t be happy when they discovered her. Declan had mixed emotions. He knew he should be happy for her, but in truth, he felt a twinge of jealousy. He suspected she would never love him as fiercely as she loved that kid. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand that Nyxie and Cody only had each other as children. Essentially, Nyxie was more mother to Cody than sister. A small grin came unbidden to his lip, knowing she was going to be a great mother to their children.

And he was going to be a crappy father—much like his own. Somehow, he would have to try to be more like his grandfather than like Coach.

Declan pulled his phone off his belt, snapped a picture and sent it off to each member of his new family. He cursed when both Nyxie’s and Cody’s phones chimed loudly, waking the boy.

“Hey,” he said when he saw Cody looking at him. “I’m Declan Stryker. We met briefly yesterday. Has Nyxie mentioned me?”

Cody’s lips began twitching as he fought to form words. It took him the better part of a minute to fight out a few words. “P-p-pea-nuh buh-er.”

Declan grinned widely. “Peanut butter? That’s what she told you?”

Cody returned his smile lopsidedly.

“That was a long time ago. I’m surprised you remember.”

“N-nest time,” Cody fought to say. “Don’t….”

“Forget the bread and jelly,” Nyxie finished, as if they had said that phrase many times before. “Oh, my God, Cody, you’re talking.” She turned to Declan. “He hasn’t spoken until now.” Nyxie pushed up to a seated position and yawned. “I guess I fell asleep.”

“It’s been a long day, baby.”

“Yeah.”

Declan helped her climb out of the bed, then put the rail back in place to protect her little brother. It took Nyxie another couple of minutes to say goodnight before they grabbed her overnight bag and made their way down to the bowels of the hospital.

~*~

Nyxie settled into Declan’s warm, strong arms as they lay in the same position they shared their first night together. “Why don’t you want to be married to me, baby? I know you love me.”

Her body became unnaturally still, as if she had stopped breathing. He pulled her closer. “I do love you,” she said softly.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the back of her head and inhaled the scent of his conditioner. “So why?”

He had to wait half a minute for her to answer.

“You make me feel bad about myself.”

“No,” he said, as if his denial would somehow change the way she felt. “I don’t understand, Nyxie.”

The limply curled hands under her chin tightened into loose fists as if she needed to find the strength in herself to say what was on her mind.

“When I quit school, I was proud of the way I was able to support Cody. When the girls came to live with me, I was happy to give up my lunch so they could eat it for supper. But you make me feel like I’m just a loser dropout, and the things I did, didn’t matter or they weren’t good enough.” She managed to keep the warble out of her voice and was glad he couldn’t see the water filling her eyes.

He rested his forehead on the back of her head. “You don’t know how much it kills me that I made you feel that way. I can appreciate the sacrifices you made. I know, short of going into the system, that you had little choice. Are you sure part of the reason isn’t because you’re afraid your kids won’t love you if they aren’t dependent upon you and your sacrifices?”

Even lying down, he could feel the way her body slumped with resignation. “In some ways,” she said. Her voice sounded fragile in that way that made his testosterone surge, and made him want to both protect her and fuck her. “And I’m worried that you’ll spoil them like you spoil me with expensive gifts, and that will make them love you more than they love me. I’m also scared that you will punish them the way you punish me. They are only kids. They’re messy and loud. Sometimes they fight with each other and talk back. I worry that you’ll treat them the way your father treated me.”

He moved away from her and gently rolled her onto her back to see her in the dim light coming out of the bathroom. The little night light barely cast enough light to see the outline of her face, but it caught on the glistening water in her eyes.

“Maybe it would help if we eased into this a bit,” Declan said, propping up his head on his hand and brushing strands of her black hair from her brow. “I think we should do what we were planning before we got married. You and the kids move into the B-side. I’ll stay in A until I’m finished with residency. We can install French doors between the living rooms, and maybe another door between the mudrooms, and open up the ground floor. If I’m home sleeping during the day, we can close off my side from yours.

“As for the parenting—I don’t know yet. I’d like to think I’d be more like my grandparents than my parents. But I’m not going to spank your kids.”

Nyxie would have liked to have pointed out Coach Stryker never hit her, but that didn’t make her less afraid of the man.

“Do you promise you won’t hit them?” she asked and searched his face as he turned and nodded. “Would you check with me before you spend money on them? They don’t need computers or game consoles.”

“Oops,” he said chuckling. “I asked my mom if they still had my old game system. I thought it would help Cody pass the time until he can get around better.”

A small huff of air escaped her lips and she shook her head slightly. “You should’ve asked me first.”

“I’m not spending any money on it and they’re mostly kids’ games. We can go through them and remove the violent ones.”

Nyxie sighed. “That’s the way it starts, isn’t it? The next thing you know, they’re mindless zombies, throwing temper tantrums because you asked them to turn it off.”

Declan ran his thumb across her lower lip. “You set limits right from the start. We’ll get him a television that has a timer. When the TV turns off, he’s finished for the day. Some of the newer game consoles have timers built in, but mine’s really old.”

“I’d rather just get him a bunch of books…only today when I gave him the balloons, I don’t think he could read the one that said, ‘Get Well Soon.’”

“Has Dr. Bradley been in to evaluate him yet?”

Nyxie shook her head. “Not unless she came early this morning.”

“I’ll remind Dr. Patel in the morning to give her a buzz. By the way, my parents are bringing the Nintendo tomorrow evening when they come for dinner.”

Her head jerked around to face him. “Please, tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m afraid not. I need to tell them the big news before the newspaper reveals that we got our marriage license. My parents would be hurt if one of their friends found out before they did.”

Nyxie rolled up against him and put her hand on his bare chest. “Can’t you just call and tell them?”

“Would you tell Cody over the phone?” He covered her hand with his. “It’s going to be all right. I already told Major, if Coach couldn’t be nice, to leave him at home.”

Nyxie didn’t respond; she just shut down. She pulled her hand back and rolled onto her side away from him. When her legs drew up, Declan began to grasp how truly upset she felt.

“Roll on your back and put your hands flat against the headboard.”

Nyxie responded to the sound of Declan’s voice. His Dom voice. Her whole body tingled with awareness as her back touched the mattress and her hands reached for the laminate of the headboard.

Declan pulled her panties down her legs. “God, I promised myself I wasn’t going to fuck you at work.”

As soon as he had her pink cotton panties off and her satiny pajama top opened, Declan turned his full attention to the sensitive nub between her legs, lowering his head to her hidden folds.

Nyxie didn’t want to respond to him. She could barely think of anything but their discussion. But the more he licked, suckled and gently bit her most private area, the more her traitorous body reacted.

“I dare you not to come, baby.”

She had no idea what he meant, but just the prospect of defying him sent her over the edge with an intensity that made her whimper, and her breath come out in gasps.

“You’re so beautiful when you come,” he said, stretching his body over hers and kissing her slow and lingeringly. “I’ve never known another woman who smiles when she climaxes. It always makes me wonder why we all don’t.”

When Declan reached for his phone, she thought he intended to take a picture, but he pressed the display a few times and set it between her breasts.

“Keep your hands where they are and don’t make a sound,” he said as the phone connected and began ringing.

He fed his large dick into her hot depths and slowly began making love to her.

“Declan, honey, what’s wrong?” his mother said without saying hello.

“Nothing, Major. Sorry to call so late. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“You know we don’t go to bed until after the 10:00 o’clock news.”

Declan continued his slow pace, pulling out until only the engorged head of his penis remained inside her, then giving her his full length with deliberate slowness.

“If Coach is there, put your phone on speaker so I can talk to you both.”

“Hey, Declan, what’s going on?”

“Just checking to see if you’re both coming to supper tomorrow.”

Declan made eye contact with Nyxie and grinned seductively at her as he gave her one hard fast thrust before returning to his torturously slow pace.

Roy made a harrumph on the other end of the line. “I guess I’m coming, but I hope you aren’t expecting me to apologize.”

Declan tweaked one of her nipples. Her eyes closed and her breath caught. “I would never ask you to apologize because I know it would be insincere. But I am asking for you to be civil. Nyxie is very special to me, and frankly, I don’t think you’re going to want to alienate the woman who may someday be the mother of your grandchildren.”

His mother gasped. “Declan, honey, I know you like this girl. She’s pretty and her lack of culture might seem exotic, and I don’t know, maybe even exciting. Just what do you know about her? Your dad asked around and it sounds like she has a very unsavory family.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll just have to get past judging her over her family, just like she had to get past judging me on mine.”

Nyxie tighten the muscles surrounding his cock. His eyes rolled back as he closed them. His hips began thrusting harder, faster making Nyxie smile at him.

“Us?” Dorothea said. “What’s not to like?”

The rise and fall of Nyxie’s chest was growing quicker. The phone between her breasts moving with it. He reached between their bodies and pressed on her clitoris with his thumb. Even as he made tiny circles, he began pressing harder until she began to climax.

“Declan, are you still there?”

“Yes, Major. Did you say something? I’m afraid I was a bit distracted.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, Nyxie just came in.”

“Tell her we said hello.”

“Don’t tell her
I
said hello,” Roy interrupted.

Declan thrust into her. “My mom says, hi. She says hi back,” he said without waiting for a response.

Nyxie planted her heels and lifted her hips with his next push.

“Did you tell her I apologized for what I said? It was really thoughtless of me to say it to anyone.”

“I’m afraid my mind is on other things when I’m with Nyxie. I guess I forgot.”

The woman sighed loud enough to be heard on their end of the line.

Nyxie mouthed the words, “I love you,” to him.

“I’ve got to go. The hospital is calling on the other line. See you tomorrow.”

“I love you, honey,” Dorothea said.

“Love you too, Major. Love you, Coach.”