Page 43 of Beg For Me (Morally Gray #3)

Beads of sweat fly off my forehead when I shake my head to clear it. After several moments, when I’ve caught my breath, I run my hand slowly up her spine, learning every precious bump, then ease us down to the mattress.

Lying on top of her, I nuzzle my nose into her hair and sigh in contentment.

Her laugh is soft and sweet. “Are you planning on ever taking that hard dick of yours out of me?”

“God no. We’re stuck like this permanently.”

“It’s going to make grocery shopping pretty awkward.”

“Going to the movies too.” Smiling, I kiss her all over her neck and shoulders, inhaling the delicious smell of her skin deep inside my lungs.

Somebody should bottle her scent. They’d make a fortune.

Against her neck, I whisper, “Ready?”

“Mmm.”

I ease of out of her slowly, push up to my knees, then bend down to kiss the small of her back. She rolls over and looks up at me with hazy, happy eyes.

“You good?”

“So good.”

“You want to use the bathroom before or after me?”

“Before,” she says, stirring. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Rising, she kisses me in passing, then heads toward the bathroom. I hear the toilet flush, then water running, then she’s back again, reclining on the bed with her arms flung over her head like one of Modigliani’s famous nudes.

Looking at her, I say quietly, “You’re stunning, Sophia. I could look at you every day for the rest of my life.”

Her throat works, but she says nothing. All the emotion she doesn’t give voice to is reflected in her eyes.

I put my hand over my heart in a silent pledge and stare at her for a moment, our gazes locked. Then I blow out a hard breath before I do something ridiculous like get teary-eyed and go into the bathroom.

I take a piss. I wash my dick in the sink, dripping soapy water on the marble floor. I dry off with a plush white hand towel and go back into the other room where Sophia waits in the same position on the bed, watching me with those dark, magical eyes.

Beckoning me, she holds out her arms. I fall into them with a grateful sigh and nestle against her plush body, resting my cheek against her neck. Threading her fingers into my hair, she kisses my forehead and slips her foot between my calves.

We stay entwined like that for a long time. Lying together in comfortable silence. Listening to the sound of our mingled breath and the world outside the windows, distant car horns and voices, the occasional harsh squawk of a seagull winging by.

“I’d like to ask you something,” she says quietly. “It’s important. Please tell me the truth. Not what you might think I want to hear, but the honest truth.”

My pulse ticks up. I don’t move except to open my eyes. “Okay. What is it?”

Her chest rises as she slowly inhales. There’s a pause that feels significant, then: “Do you want children?”

I freeze. An alarm bell starts ringing in my head, faint at first, but growing louder with each beat of my heart. She senses my distress.

“There isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s a simple yes or no.”

“Then why do I feel like one of those answers will result in me never seeing you again?”

“Please, just tell me the truth.”

I raise my head and look at her. She won’t meet my gaze, looking instead at my chin.

“Why are you asking me that?”

When she mutely shakes her head, I roll us over so she’s on her back and I’m gazing down into her pinched face. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a simple question. Yes or no.”

“It’s not a simple fucking question, it’s a loaded question.” When she doesn’t respond to that, I say, “Do you want kids? More, I mean?”

Her eyes flash with anger when she looks up at me. But she responds in that same calm, exasperating voice. “I’ll tell you the truth about that as soon as you answer my question.”

I stare at her, trying not to panic. “What brought this on?”

“Carter, please.”

“Does this have something to do with your ex? Your mother?”

She tries to roll out from under me, but I won’t let her go. Holding her chin, I demand, “At least tell me why you’re asking me this.”

“I can’t. It might sway your answer.”

I search her face for any clue as to what’s going on, but I find only a kind of resolute misery in her expression. It scares me more than anything else so far.

“Please,” she whispers, her eyes welling. “Just be honest with me. It’s all I’ve ever asked of you.”

I say hoarsely, “You’re fucking killing me right now. You’re killing me, Sophia. What the hell is wrong?”

She shakes her head and presses her lips together, stubborn as a cat.

I can tell I’m not going to win this. There’s also no dodging it either, that’s clear. So, because I gave her my word, I surrender to the inevitable.

It was a beautiful dream while it lasted.

Feeling nauseated, I roll to my back and close my eyes. “I’ll answer your question. But first, I have to tell you a story. Then my answer will make sense.”

After a moment, she stretches out beside me. I know she’s looking at me, but I can’t bear to meet her eyes.

“My father…”

Fuck. Just tell her! Just say it out loud.

“When I was ten years old, I was kidnapped.”

I hear her sharp intake of breath, feel the sudden tension in her body, but keep going because if I don’t get this out now, I never will.

“We were living in Bel Air at the time. The same house my parents still live in because my father refused to ‘let them win’ and move anywhere else. I don’t remember much about the actual abduction.

I was asleep. The extraction team who rescued me assumed the kidnappers used some kind of drug.

Chloroform on a rag maybe, nobody knows for sure.

They didn’t leave any traces. They broke into the house in the middle of the night, bypassing the security systems somehow.

However they did it, they knew what they were doing.

I woke up inside a metal cage somewhere cold and dark.

I couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear a sound. I thought I’d been buried alive.”

I have to stop to suck in a breath. The old, familiar claustrophobia is closing in on me, squeezing icy fingers around my throat, cutting off my air.

Sophia rests her hand on my arm. Just that simple contact helps the steel bands around my chest loosen. I exhale a hard breath and continue.

“I was in captivity in a cage for six weeks because my father refused to pay the ransom.”

She’s horrified, whispering, “Oh my God.”

My laugh is bitter. “Yeah. He said if he did, that would just encourage other people to come after his family too. But I think if it were Callum who’d been taken, he’d have coughed up the money within hours. He had his heir and a spare, and another left over who didn’t matter as much. Me.”

I hear the rage in my voice, though I’m trying to keep it together. Sophia gently presses her lips to my shoulder and squeezes my arm.

Her tone deadly soft, she says, “If I ever meet your father, that bastard better run.”

This is the moment I know I’m truly in love with her. Not infatuated, not obsessed with a fantasy, but really in love.

Which makes this conversation so much more painful because I think I already know how it will end. I take a breath and continue.

“So I was terrified, but I wasn’t physically harmed.

I think the only reason for that was that one of the kidnappers…

there was a woman with them. The rest were men, different men who would come and go and were always fighting and screaming at each other, but there was one woman who was there almost all the time.

She was the one who brought me food and water.

Changed the shit bucket. Sang to me when I cried.

As time wore on and it started to become clear they were never going to get their ransom money, I think the only thing that saved me from being killed outright or sent back to my father piece by piece was her. ”

I never learned her name. But I’ve never forgotten her face. It’s burned into my memory. She was in her mid-twenties, a pretty brunette with big dark eyes.

The Marine who rescued me put a bullet in her head.

It was merciful compared to what he did to the others.

I drag more air into my lungs, then moisten my dry lips and tell her the rest.

“The details don’t matter, but I was found and brought home.

Of course, it was kept out of the papers.

My parents never even went to the police.

The extraction companies that do this sort of work have very wealthy, high-profile clients.

Politicians. Entertainers. Royalty. They’re extremely good at what they do.

So they found me, they took me out of that cage and brought me home, one very fucked-up ten-year-old boy whose father told him he was a good little soldier, gave him a hug, then went into his study and closed the door.

We never spoke of it again. I’m not sure if they even told my brothers.

Everyone acted as if I’d been away visiting relatives.

“That’s how I learned not to talk about the hard things, to act like life was great no matter how shitty it is, to pretend in a thousand different ways while inside I was dying.

And expecting that, at any moment, it could happen again.

Only next time, I wouldn’t have someone to keep the wolves at bay.

I spent a decade terrified but with a big smile on my face until I finally went into therapy.

If I hadn’t, I doubt I’d be here today.”

I turn my head and look at Sophia. She’s staring at me with tears silently leaking from the corners of her eyes. I wipe my thumb under her cheekbone, smiling sadly.

“So to answer your question…no. I don’t want children.

I can’t take on the huge responsibility of raising another person to be a good adult.

I’m not qualified. I won’t project all my mental shit onto a kid.

” My throat tightens, but I force myself to keep going.

“That’s how generational trauma starts. I mean, I think I’m a decent person.

I function. I survive. But I’ll never be solid enough to be a good father. ”

I tear my gaze away from the pain in her eyes that cuts deeper than I can stand. Staring at the ceiling, I fight the war in my guts: the knots, the nausea, the weight of this confession pressing like cement blocks on my chest. My voice is thick when I finally push the words out.

“Knowing that, I had a vasectomy a few years ago.”

She’s silent. I can’t bear to look at her and see her disappointment, so I close my eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice choked, she says, “Oh, Carter, I’m sorry. For that scared little boy, and for how hard you’ve had to pretend for so long. But I’m so grateful you told me the truth.”

She rolls on top of me, takes my face in her hands, and stares down into my eyes.

“I don’t want children, either. More of them, I mean.”

My breath catches. My heart skips a beat before starting to hammer.

That’s not what I was expecting. Every woman I’ve dated has told me she wants kids, sometimes on the first damn date.

“You don’t?”

“No. Which is convenient, since I no longer have a uterus. I had a hysterectomy.”

When she smiles, something inside me comes undone. My heart crashes under my ribs. Burning hope spreads like wildfire through my body.

“And you’re not—” My voice cracks. I swallow hard. “You’re not turned off by that story I just told you? You don’t think I have too much baggage?”

She leans down, pressing the gentlest kiss to my lips. One that says she sees me, the way nobody else ever has.

“Here’s the thing about baggage, Carter…everybody’s got it. You, me, whatever person either of us could date. Nobody’s perfect.” Her fingers stroke my jaw, her touch gentle and reverent. “But I think you’re as close to perfection as it gets.”

A strangled sound escapes my throat. I can’t speak. I can’t breathe past the emotion clogging my chest. So I do the only thing I can. I pull her down against me and hide my face in her neck so she won’t see my eyes fill with tears.

She hugs me hard and doesn’t let go. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

I feel like I’m finally home.