Page 13 of Cursed to Love (Cursed to Love #1)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

P aige rested her hand on Blake’s shoulder as he lifted her foot to finish drying her off. When he was done, he grabbed another towel and dried himself. He hung the towels on the rack and took her hand, leading her into the bedroom.

She chewed on her inner lip as guilt ate at her. Maybe she should have been honest and not faked her orgasm, but she worried about what he would think if he knew he hadn’t given her one. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been turned on. She had, even more than she’d expected. Since he hadn’t said anything, hopefully he didn’t know she’d faked it.

Closer than she’d ever been with her husband, she’d been so close to coming. Her orgasm had built and built, and when Blake had captured her mouth with his, there’d been a moment when she’d have bet money that her body was going to let loose with the kind of explosive detonation that she used to have with him. When it didn’t, she’d been too embarrassed to explain. Her body just didn’t respond the way it used to.

Blake picked her up and laid her on the bed, then crawled up and planked over her. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

She blushed. “You make me feel beautiful.”

“Because you are.” He caressed her as he brushed the wet strands of her hair off her face. Their gazes locked, like they had in the shower, and if she didn’t know better, she’d have said he looked at her with love in his eyes.

Overcome with emotion and guilt, she stretched up and brushed her lips across his, needing his touch.

He lowered onto his elbows, still hovering over her as he kissed her. She wanted to spend forever kissing him. He made her feel more than she’d felt in years. The feeling was both glorious and scary. On one hand she felt cherished when she was with him. But on the other, she still feared she’d end up being reliant on him for more than just a place to live. What if she was eventually willing to do whatever it took to please him? Would she lose herself again? Could she even already be doing this because she faked her orgasm and hadn’t told him the truth?

For a split second, she wondered if their friends-with-benefits agreement had been a mistake. Then he lowered his body fully on to hers and all thoughts fled. They kissed and rubbed against each other. Her mind finally shut off and she was nothing but a mass of sensation—lips against lips, his callused hands along her skin, the rough hair on his legs against her smooth ones, his hard cock against her soft folds.

She roamed her hands along his sides and up over his back. Like a flashback hitting her, she remembered he used to like the sting of her fingernails dragging along his skin and wondered if he still did. Needing to know, she tentatively ran her nails down his back.

“Fuck, yes. That feels so good.” He ducked his head into the hollow by her neck, melting at her touch. She did it again, enjoying the way he groaned and rubbed himself against her harder.

He lifted up and gave her a wicked, sexy grin. “More of that later. But now…” His voice trailed off as he kissed his way down her body.

The brush of his light beard as he dragged it along her stomach lit her up. She thrust up into him, getting wetter. Then she worried. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so turned on. What if she was too wet? Would he think that was gross? Or if she wasn’t wet enough, would he blame her?

When she’d been with Blake in the past, she hadn’t been a virgin, but she wouldn’t have called herself worldly when it came to sex either. She’d never orgasmed with a guy, not until Blake. He used to love going down on her and using his fingers because he could make her come hard every time. Like see-stars-behind-her-eyes hard.

She closed her eyes, trying to let the sensations take her again, but as Blake moved lower, the more up in her head she got. He rubbed his beard along her inner thighs, something she used to love, but now all she could do was think. She’d spent years walking on proverbial eggshells, especially in bed, and couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to do something wrong.

What if it didn’t work this time? She felt herself get dry and stiff. Anxiety was such a bitch.

Blake lifted his head, looking up her body at her. “What’s wrong?” He’d probably felt her stiffen.

“Nothing. I just want you inside me.” It wasn’t a lie, just not the entire truth. She crooked her finger at him, hoping her smile looked sultry and not crazed.

He crawled up her body, and she felt herself relax. He kissed her, then went back on his knees and grabbed his cock, giving it several long strokes. “This what you want?” he teased.

“Yes.” She licked her lips and went on her knees too. Grasping onto his thighs, she leaned forward and slowly lowered her mouth over his hard length. His hand dropped away and grasped the back of her head. He didn’t push, just held her.

“Christ. Yes, baby.”

Paige took him as deep as she could, then back out and swirled her tongue around his glans. Repeating the motion several times, she brought him closer to the edge. She loved hearing his groans, knowing he liked what she was doing.

Sliding her hands to the backs of his legs, she pulled him closer, giving him a silent signal.

“Christ,” Blake groaned. “Are you saying I can fuck your face, baby?”

Paige squeezed the backs of Blake’s thighs again in answer, his crude words turning her on even more. Even knowing the need to please had gotten her into trouble before, she wanted to pleasure Blake more than anything.

“Fuck.” Blake pulled out of her mouth and lifted her toward the head of the bed. On her back once more, he planked over her. “As fabulous as that was, baby, I don’t want to come in your mouth right now. I want to be buried deep inside you.”

“I want that too.” She reached down and guided him to her core.

He entered her in one long, slow stroke, sliding in deep. She arched into him and her head fell back at the exquisite feeling of fullness.

“Paige, look at me,” Blake demanded as he lowered himself onto his elbows, his body flush with hers.

She met his gaze. His blue eyes focused on her intensely, as if he could see right into her soul. In that moment she knew she couldn’t fake another orgasm, because it would be like lying to his face, but she would give him all of her that she could.

Wrapping her legs around him, she urged him deeper as he plunged into her over and over. His rhythm created just the right amount of friction, and she felt her orgasm build again, as it had in the shower.

“Oh, god!” she cried, hoping this time she’d be able to let go.

“Fuck!” Blake lifted up, sitting back, and grabbed behind her knees. Pushing them toward her chest, he opened her up. She grasped his biceps as he punched his hips forward, driving into her.

Her orgasm rode the crest. So close. She wanted to come so badly. “Yes! Oh, god!”

Blake dropped her legs and lowered onto her, taking her mouth in a savage kiss. He pounded into her again and stilled, his body a delicious weight on top of hers.

When he rolled over onto his back, he brought her with him, and gently took her face in his hands, kissing her. It was soft and sweet.

“I’ll be right back.” He went into the bathroom and came back with a washcloth. She felt shy when he got back into bed, but he didn’t let her pull away as he wiped her clean with the warm cloth.

When he finished, he tossed the cloth on the floor and rolled onto his side to face her. “Paige?” he questioned softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She tensed. “Tell you what?”

“That you couldn’t come.”

“I can.” With a vibrator, she didn’t add.

He pushed up on his elbow so he was looking down at her. “Then it was me. I didn’t do enough.”

“It wasn’t you, Blake.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand. You used to orgasm when we were together before. At least… I thought you did. Were you faking it then too?”

That answered her question if he’d known about what she’d done in the shower.

“No, every orgasm I had with you before was real. I’m sorry for faking it in the shower. But I didn’t just now.”

“No, but you didn’t come either.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, his gaze too intense, and let out a slow breath. When she looked at him again, she detected only sincerity.

“My marriage wasn’t great. It…” God, she felt like such a fool admitting her failures, but even if she and Blake never had sex again, he was her friend and deserved her honesty. “The sex with Craig was horrible, and he blamed it on me. I’d get so caught up in my head worrying that I’d do or say the wrong thing that I could never really relax. You…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re the only guy I’ve ever orgasmed with,” she said quietly as she watched his face. His eyes widened and then the corner of his lips twitched up into a smile.

“That’s good news. Then I can try again.” He ran his arm down her stomach.

“No.” Paige sat up and scooted back against the headboard, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

Blake leaned against the headboard beside her. “I don’t understand. Why not?”

“Because I’m not asking you to fix me, Blake.

“I won’t try and fix you.”

“Oh, come on, don’t lie. Every time we have sex, you’ll be trying to see if you can make me come. Neither of us needs that kind of pressure. Maybe it will never happen again, and then what? Both of us will be so tense, it won’t be any fun at all. I enjoyed what we did. Isn’t that enough?”

“If you say it is.” He pulled her down and spooned behind her, wrapping his arm around her. “You’ll tell me if that changes?” he asked quietly.

She grasped onto his arm that was around her. “Yes. I’ll tell you. But I did enjoy it.”

He placed a soft kiss on her shoulder. “Okay.”

Paige only hoped she hadn’t thrown a wrench into their friendship or ruined their new arrangement almost as soon as it started.

* * *

Thursday, October 31

Blake looked across the table at Cade. “You got everything you need?”

As an executive team, they’d agreed to buy the strip mall. Several of them as well as the lead project manager had toured the property. Once Jake and the temporary VP of commercial operations ran the numbers, everything had gone to Cade for a review, then to the executive for a decision. Akerman Contracting was a family-owned business and didn’t have a board of directors, but Blake believed in involving his staff in the decision-making as much as possible.

“Yes, I’ll finalize the offer,” Cade said. “Let’s do this the official way.”

Blake gave his brother a nod, not needing an explanation. Cade didn’t want Blake telling Paige about the offer until he had everything tied up legally. Then he would inform the broker. As much as Blake wanted to be able to give Paige the good news, he would abide by Cade’s wishes. This was business.

“Anything else?” he asked, checking in with everyone around the room. “Thanks, that’s all. Everyone can get home early to hand out candy.”

As was their practice, Jake, Cade, Dane, and Ford would stay in the room once the others had left. As one-fifth owner of Akerman Contracting, Gage connected via video, his face projected in the screen on the end wall, although he didn’t make it to every meeting.

Once the door closed behind him, he sat back in his chair and relaxed. It wasn’t that he was uptight around his employees. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t as much of a CEO around his brothers. He was one of them.

“Anyone got any—” Blake’s words cut off as the curse took over his body. He hadn’t been expecting another episode so soon, but this would be the seventh.

He could hear his brothers call out to him, but he was unable to respond. His eyes closed of their own accord as images swirled in his mind.

When the pictures settled, he saw a tall-masted ship through an early morning fog, ready to set sail. He was in England in 1802, but that was all the information the curse imparted.

The air smelled of saltwater, and Blake wasn’t sure if he could truly feel the moisture on his skin or if it was part of the illusion. The cries of seagulls mixed with the excited voices of sailors preparing to embark on their journey.

His vision focused on a couple. Knowing now that he was meant to learn from the couples, Blake stepped closer, wanting to hear their words above the drone of the seagulls and other voices. The man wore the same uniform as dozens of sailors around him and the woman wore a bonnet tied under her chin. He held one of her gloved hands and used his other to gently brush some hair away from her face.

“Elizabeth,” the man said barely loud enough for Blake to hear, “I vow to return, and when I do, I will make you my wife.”

Elizabeth’s eyes glistened with tears as she pulled her hand from his, dug into a pocket in her coat and pulled out a piece of cloth. “Take this,” she said as she pressed the cloth into the sailor’s hands. “It’s a handkerchief that I embroidered with your initials, so you’ll always have something of me with you.

The sailor held the cloth to his chest. “Thank you. I will cherish it.”

Elizabeth flung herself into his arms. Her body shook with sobs as the sailor held her tightly. After a minute he held her upper arms and pulled back from her. “I must go, but I will return. I love you, Elizabeth.”

“And I love you, Christopher. I will wait for you.”

When he reached down and picked up the bag at his feet and walked away, Blake noticed a man in the shadows. He had similar features and coloring to the sailor but wasn’t dressed in uniform and stood off to the side, watching the couple with a look of longing on his face.

The air shifted around Blake, the cries of seagulls replaced by the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, the shouts of vendors selling their wares, and people chatting in the streets. The smell of human waste and soot hung heavy in the air, forcing Blake to breathe through his mouth.

Like before, his vision—or perhaps the curse—focused on a couple. He recognized the woman as Elizabeth. One hand rested on her large belly, a gold band on her ring finger, while her other arm was locked with the arm of the man beside her.

It took a moment for Blake to place the man as the one in the shadows on the dock.

A shout caught Blake’s attention, pulling his gaze away from the couple. A sailor, Christopher, stumbled down the street toward them. He clutched a cloth in his fist and held it toward the couple.

Elizabeth gasped and looked between the sailor and the man on her arm.

“How could you betray me like this?” Christopher yelled at the other man.

“We had no word for the longest time, and Elizabeth feared you were dead,” the man barked back, his tone defensive. “I didn’t mean to steal her from you.”

Blake felt uneasy listening to the argument, but even he didn’t believe the man. He had an arrogance about him that belied his words.

“Betrayed by my own brother,” Christoper hissed. He threw a punch, knocking his brother backward onto the dirty street.

Elizabeth screamed, but Blake didn’t get to see what happened next because the air shifted again. When the images settled, Blake found himself in a home with stone walls and logs burning brightly in a fireplace.

A woman, her hair fastened up on her head, sat in a rocking chair, feeding a baby at her breast. A man sat in the chair beside her, staring at the fire. Two small boys rushed into the room with logs in their arms and dropped them by the fire.

“Dad, will you tell us a story?” one of the boys asked.

The man shifted to lift one of the boys onto his lap and Blake recognized him as Christopher. The years had not been kind to him. His face looked thin and haggard, and he didn’t smile.

He began to tell the boys a story and then the image changed once more. The air didn’t shift like Blake had come to expect. Instead, the scene sped up to show what he suspected was later in the evening of the same day.

Christopher and the woman were in bed together, her hair in long braids. “Will you ever love me?” she asked softly.

“Have I not provided for you? Given you a home and children?” Christopher questioned.

“Yes, but not your love.”

“I told you when I asked for your hand that I would give you everything I was able to except for my heart.”

The woman’s lip trembled, and she nodded but didn’t cry.

“I care for you, and I will always provide.”

Christopher’s voice held none of the passion Blake had heard while he stood on the dock and promised to come back to Elizabeth. Christopher patted his wife’s hand and rolled over, settling into the bed.

When the air shifted again, Blake felt his body release from the curse’s hold and opened his eyes to see Jake and his brothers staring at him.

“He’s back,” Ford said.

“Holy shit,” Gage said through the speaker. “You were gone for over fifteen minutes.”

Blake scrubbed his hands over his face, still feeling Christopher’s detachment from his wife.

“Where did you go this time?” Jake asked.

Blake dropped his hands to the table. “At first I was on the docks in London in 1802. Then the vision fast-forwarded a few years, but I don’t know how many.”

Dane frowned. “How many days in between the episodes now?”

“Four. The last one was the morning of our Halloween party.” Blake walked them through what he saw and the emotions, which he always felt as if they were his own. He’d begun to think that the emotions were more important than the actual events. Although he couldn’t pinpoint why, he knew that during every single one he felt a sense of hopelessness and despair at failed or lost love, which is why he wanted to avoid having those feelings himself.

“What I don’t get,” Cade said, “is how showing you all the misery is supposed to make you fall in love?”

Blake didn’t know either, and then he voiced a question that had been on the back of his mind. “What if it’s not?

“What do you mean?” Dane asked.

“Mom’s letter said the curse would take effect sometime after our thirtieth birthday if we don’t fall in love by then, right?” Blake looked at Cade for confirmation, figuring his brother had memorized the letter.

At Cade’s nod, Blake continued, not liking the conclusion he’d come to. “I didn’t fall in love by the time I turned thirty. Maybe once the curse takes effect it’s already too late. It can’t be stopped. Maybe it’s trying to tell me that if I fall in love now I’ll only face heartache.”

“No,” Gage said harshly. All eyes turned toward the screen on the wall. “You can’t think that way. If you don’t stop the curse you could end up in a trance all day long. There’s got to be a way to stop it.”

“Have you told Paige?” Jake asked.

“No, not yet.”

“She needs to know what’s happening because you could zone out in front of her.”

Blake knew Jake was right, but he wasn’t ready to tell her. He’d been thinking a lot about her not finding release when they had sex, because he wanted her to enjoy it as much as he did. Telling her he was cursed without a way to prove it could sound like he wanted to get rid of her. At least that’s what he would have once thought if she gave him a crazy story like being cursed.

“She could be the answer to breaking the curse,” Ford offered.

Dane backhanded Ford’s arm. “He can’t force her to fall in love with him.”

“I didn’t say he could.” Ford met Blake’s gaze. “But maybe if it’s meant to happen, you can speed up the process by wooing her.”

Gage made a choking sound. “Wooing her?”

“Maybe Ford’s right,” Dane said, ever the peacekeeper, interjecting before Gage and Ford could start razzing each other. “Are you treating Paige the way she deserves? Showing her you’re a half-decent guy?”

“Only half-decent? Thanks,” Blake said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

“Semantics,” Cade said. “You know what he means.”

“Woo, date, whatever…” Gage offered. “Just treat her right.”

When Dane and Ford opened their mouths to add their two cents, Blake put his hand up to halt them. “I get it. I do. But Paige went through some shit with her ex. I don’t know what, but I think he was a manipulative bastard and likely gaslighted her because she’s always concerned about being reliant on someone and them having control over her. I don’t want Paige to think I’m the same as her ex and mentioning a curse I can’t prove might not be the best move to earn her trust.”

Cade stood. “We’re not going to solve this tonight, and I’ve got to get going.”

Gage said goodbye, and the screen went blank.

A few minutes later, Blake and Jake walked out of Akerman’s leaving Dane and Ford behind to hand out candy. Every year, one or two people took on the task since their building was a renovated house on a residential street.

Jake’s expression was serious when they reached their trucks. “Telling Paige about the curse might be tricky, but just don’t wait too long.”

“I just need a few more days to figure out how to tell her.”

Jake gave him a nod. “Okay. You and Paige going to bring Emmie by my place for trick or treating tonight?”

“That’s the plan. See you in a while.”

For tonight, Blake was going to put the curse out of his mind and just enjoy his time with Paige and Emmie. If his time with them was limited, he wanted to enjoy it while he could.