Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise Stories Book 2) (21 page)

“Cain Callahan, sir,” I spoke to her grandfather first.

“Francisco Vincentia,” he muttered in a heavy Italian accent.

“Isabelle Vincentia,” her grandmother said meekly, almost shyly. She flushed like I’d seen women do around me. She wasn’t flirting, though. It occurred to me that she was now family. I didn’t have grandparents.

“Sofie?” Francisco questioned. The disappointment in his voice was clear and Sofie broke into tears instantly. She didn’t want to upset them. I understood that, but she belonged with me, and I didn’t want her to be ashamed of us.

He extended his arms for her and she folded into him. Her grandmother rubbed her back, then looked up at me. Her eyes questioned how, when, and why me, and I hated that look of trepidation in her dark eyes. I didn’t need their approval, but for Sofie’s sake, I wanted it.

“I’d like to have a wedding here, someday. We could renew our vows,” I offered as a form of retribution.

“Did you get married in a church?” her grandmother suddenly asked, appalled that the answer might be anything other than that truth. We’d been married here, right under their noses, while they slept in their marriage bed, and Sofie and I drank too much. Sofie peeked at me from where she was enveloped in her grandfather’s arms. She nodded to let me know I had to lie.

“Well, we must celebrate,” Mrs. Vincentia decided, taking a deep breath as she scanned down my arms. She was doing the most to make the best of what was a difficult situation for them. Sofie had never done anything to cause them concern in the past. She was the dutiful grandchild, who did as she was instructed and didn’t need reminding. She never gave them cause to punish her or question her motives. She never talked back to them, because she didn’t have to stand up for herself. She didn’t have to fight to protect siblings. I didn’t begrudge her, but I couldn’t support the disapproval of her grandparents. Sofie had done nothing wrong.

She must have sensed my irritation because she reached for me. Her hand wrapped around my arm, and she coiled her arms around it, holding onto me. Her grandfather eyed the motion as her hands covered the exposed tattoos. Her grandmother watched Sofie. Their gazes were heat lamps, the pressure oppressive. Their scrutinizing eyes inspected me for signs of danger. Sofie gripped tighter. She was rubbing up and down my arm so aggressively, I thought she’d peel the skin off of me, as if underneath was a different layer that her grandparents would approve of.

Holding out a small glass of wine for each of us, her grandfather raised the glass.

“Salute. Amore. Felicità,” her grandmother offered and Sofie translated. Health. Love. Happiness. We toasted then I drank the wine in one swallow and wiped at my forehead. Meeting her family in this manner was stressful, but nothing compared to what announcing her to my father would entail. We spent a few more moments in awkward explanation of how we were recently married but were keeping it a secret due to my profession. We surprisingly worked well together, feeding off one another to build a story that sounded plausible. When we finally made our exiting good night, Sofie led me to her room.

“Do you think they believed us?” I questioned, as Sofie slumped against her door after closing it with a heavy huff. I fell onto her bed.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Shit, that was hard,” I sighed, looking up at her ceiling. “It’s going to be okay, right?” I questioned. Her response was climbing over the top of me, straddling me, before her mouth came to mine.

I woke to a tender kiss on my neck and turned to pull her to me.

“I need to get up,” she stressed. “Wedding brunch.”

Recalling how we told her grandparents about our marriage, I sat upright instantly. Sofie giggled. I swear it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. The innocence of it, mixed with her teasing, made my heart skip. I turned to claim her mouth as punishment for laughing.

“The wedding party that was here, not ours,” she clarified after one hard kiss. Her voice grew quiet and I skimmed the expression on her face. She looked away from me, and I used a thick finger to move her cheek so she’d return to me.

“We can have a wedding brunch, if you wish. We can do a honeymoon in Italy. We can have a real wedding. Whatever you’d like, Sofie,” I said in seriousness. I didn’t want her to feel incomplete with how things happened.

She smiled slowly at me, and in typical Sofie fashion, everything seemed okay. We would get to all those things, but she seemed content just knowing the plan was to make them happen someday.

She kissed me quickly, reminding me she needed to work.

“You know what’s mine is yours. I can take care of you. You don’t need to keep working here.”

“I like working here,” she replied crawling out from under me. “This is my family.”

“I’m your family,” I reminded her, and she smiled that tender smile once again.

I was allowed to fall back asleep, take a long run, then collect my wife for another afternoon by the stream. We needed to leave in the morning, in order for her to make her Monday class. I’d had Kursch drive me to the inn, knowing I wasn’t leaving without her. We would be driving home together.

I called Kursch.

“You missed a fight,” he stated. That was true. Saturday night, as I made love to Sofie under the stars, I’d missed an exhibition fight. The uncontained wrath of my father would be ruthless. I hadn’t had my phone on all weekend. Opening the messages, I had seventy-seven texts from my father, each one growing in frustration and fury. I didn’t read further than the first five to get the gist of his feelings on my failure. I’d known his reaction before I clicked on the phone. I’d never skipped a fight, but I never had to fight to keep my wife either. Getting Sophie back was more important to me.

“How mad is he?” I asked Kursch, but I knew the answer. Atom Callahan was going to be madder than mad. Lightning bolts and thunder were going to be tame, compared to what I expected as his reaction. I might be twenty-four, but I was the breadwinner of my family. I had responsibilities, he would tell me. I needed to keep fighting.

“It’s not going to be pretty,” Kursch warned. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

Kursch would temper the fury of my father. He had been his friend for as long as I could remember, and longer. He was there when my parents married, and he was there when my mother was kicked out. He had been a faithful servant to both of us, in different manners. I didn’t know his past. He had only been present and future to me.

“I’m going home,” I stated. “I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t push him, Cain. You and I both know this. Be careful,” he warned.

My father wouldn’t physically hurt me. He couldn’t any longer. His blows ended the day I fought back. That was the day he claimed I was a man. He’d kept most of my money frozen from me, and that hadn’t hurt me either, until I wanted to purchase my home in California. I’d needed the year to collect the funds, separately from my budget, in order to attain it. There was only one way my father could damage me, and I wasn’t letting him anywhere near Sofie.

We had an hour drive back to Preston, but I wanted to make a stop first. We left in the pre-dawn hours, which Sofie’s grandparents knew was in order to get her back to school in time for class. I promised her she could sleep in the car, but I couldn’t skip out on a special stop.

When we pulled into the diner parking lot, Sofie’s eyes opened softly.

“Why are we here?” she sleepily asked.

“I want to show you something.”

Holding her hand, I led her through the dark dawn, climbing the steep trail to the turret outlook. It was one of my favorite places, and I wanted to share an experience with her. I was nervous. The last time we’d been here didn’t end exactly how I planned. I hoped to rectify that presently. As we stood before the curved cement barrier, I wrapped the blanket I’d taken from the inn around us. I asked Sofie to hold it then brace her hands on the cool stone before her. My hands made quick work to slip down her yoga pants to which she gently protested.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but then my fingers hit slick folds, and my mouth warmed her neck. She rocked into me as I prepped her for what was to come next.

“Remember our first wedding night?” I muttered, as I formed a haphazard trail of kisses over her neck.

“Yes,” she sighed. We’d made love slowly, sweetly, like we had last night. Then we did it my way. Hard.

“Now it’s my turn,” I said, loosening my track pants and forcing them down enough to free my dick. I sprang forth for her, and dragged the length of me through the crevice of her ass.

“Cain?” she questioned.

“Not like this. Not yet,” I said. “This is a remembrance.” I positioned myself at her entrance. My fingers had worked her enough that her sweet juices moistened my tip, but I needed to wait. The thin light was cresting the horizon, and I asked her to look forward, while I peppered her with kisses again. I dragged the point of me through her slick folds, teasing her with what was to come.

I pressed her forward, so she rested her elbows on the stone ledge, but asked her to continue watching the growing light.

“Last time we were here,” I reminded her, “you weren’t satisfied by me.” I entered her on a swift thrust and she let out a breathy groan.

“I never want you to be unsatisfied by me again,” I grunted, drawing to the edge of her before plunging forward again. I wrapped my fingers around her ponytail and tugged her head back, forcing her to concentrate on the scene unfolding before her. The light grew. A stream of yellow threaded through the sky. I slipped to the edge of her again then thrust forward.

“Oh God,” she whimpered.

“Not God. Cain,” I reminded her with a sharp plunge deep inside her. She met me jab for jab, as she rocked back, drawing me into her. Keeping one hand on her hip, I released her hair and braced my other hand on the cement embankment to steady me from forcing her into the hard stone structure.

“That’s my sweet temptation,” I groaned, as I increased the pace to hammer into her, repeatedly driving in deeper while she leaned back to take me. My fingers slipped from hip to clit and worked the nub, increasing the rhythm of her clenching over me.

“Watch,” I whispered, as the sun broke the horizon and Sofie shattered around me. She wrung me out until I couldn’t hold back any longer and spilled into her on a heavy thrust. My hand had slipped around her waist, as I settled forward to rest my chest against her back. We panted in the silence of the early morning light and the glory of breaking day.

“That was beautiful,” she whispered.

“Yes, you are,” I replied in her ear, then kissed her shoulder.

“How did you time that?” she asked, still clenching to hold me in her.

“I’d make the sun rise and set for only you, if I could,” I said to her with a smile.

She giggled and I softened, the pressure a different sensation over me.

“I wanted it to be perfect this time,” I said, opening up my palm, which had secured my intention inside it while we were joined as one.

“I want you to be my wife.” Then I added, “For real.”

Inside my hand, I carried a three-carat diamond. It wasn’t the original ring I’d given her, which was cursed by the divorcee from whom I had purchased it. I wanted something new, something that hadn’t been worn before; something worthy of Sofie.

“I … I’ve already said yes,” she replied, looking down at the diamond, glistening in the new light of another day.

“This is a promise, like that sunrise. Today is a new day, a new start. For us.”

She took the ring off my palm, released our connection and turned to me. We were both partially naked. Her yoga pants still removed, my track pants at my thighs, but I was bare to the soul when she looked at me.

“Put it on me?” she questioned. Slipping it down her finger, I decided if it was the only thing she ever wore again, I’d be the happiest man.

The attempted blow to my face was an instant reminder that I was the son of my father. Fortunate for me, I was quicker than the old man and caught his punch before it struck me. His fury was in more than his fist. It was spelled on his face with splotches of ruddy skin covering his angry cheeks.

“Where the fuck have you been? Do you have any idea what this cost you? This was a forfeit and it was a key fight to the circuit.” His rage grew with each inquiry, each statement of fact. It was as if I didn’t know what I’d done, which I did, but reiterating it to me was his way of reinforcing that I’d fucked up.

“What is going on with you?” he sighed, still heavily irritated. “We had to pay for that damn shrink, so you could talk it all out about Montana. That shit is over. Now we have his sister to burden us. We don’t need you flipping out again.”

“Don’t talk about Elma like that,” I muttered, ignoring his insult of me.

“Elma?” he spat, blinking rapidly like he couldn’t believe I used her name. “I don’t give two shits about Elma.”

I sighed internally. My brother’s girlfriend had been a handful, but she was good for Abel. He needed her, and she doted on him. Once she got past the revenge of her brother’s death, she noticed before her was something more important. Someone more important. I was reaching the same conclusion, about Sofie. She was more important than any match.