“Papa!” the little girl squealed, making him wince. He loved his children. Swear to God he did, but so help him sometimes…. He stared at the whirling dervish of dark curly hair and deep green eyes as she sobbed in dismay at this destruction. “I maded that for Auntie Tulip!” She stood, hands on her pajama-clad hips, the look on her face a mirror image of the one he’d just seen on his wife’s. He sighed and stared at the now officially screaming infant boy in his arms.
“Shh…little one. We must stand together, you and I. I’m on your side, remember?” He tried to get his son to take the bottle he’d just warmed but as soon as the baby touched his lips to it, he screamed even louder. “Shit!” Emre flung the damn thing across the room. His daughter watched in shock as it shattered and formula went flying over the leather chair beneath it.
“Papa.” She pointed at the mess. “That was a bad choice.” He couldn’t help but smile hearing his own words parroted back at him. “I am telling
Anne
.” She flounced out the room, leaving Emre to make his way over to the broken glass and milk, spearing his foot at least twice on the way into the kitchen for another bottle, or a shot of whiskey, whichever he found first at this point.
He noted Elle’s slight form, holding a broom and dustpan, on the way past him. They didn’t speak. It had been tense for days, since their nanny had been out sick, and they’d been splitting kid duty. His sister Lale was due back today, thank heaven, after nearly a month gone to Las Vegas, and the nanny should be back to rights by Monday. But in the meantime, he’d discovered the combination of Elle’s return to full-time work as CEO of her pharmaceutical company and his own recent appointment as the newest economics professor in the UCLA School of Business had not helped his central dilemma one bit. He was needed back at home—in Istanbul. Helping his father.
He heated another bottle, jiggling his son in his arms, listened as Elle calmed Ayla in that magic way he had yet to master, and fought the rising frustration that had kept him up nights for weeks now. His mother was not a nag. She would never, ever insist that he come home and take over their myriad, successful businesses now that he had his PhD. But he knew, like he knew the size of his own feet, that it was expected. And the last few nights he’d been utterly incapable of staying asleep after two a.m. and was becoming foggy and useless in the classroom.
Once Aslan took the second bottle without a fuss, his amazing hazel eyes focused intently on Emre as if he were memorizing his father’s face for a later test, the happy noises from the other room included a vacuum, and the television. When Elle wrapped her arms around him from behind, Emre’s nerve endings were positively dancing with something he couldn’t identify. He felt jazzed up, antsy, and exhausted all at once.
His wife’s voice soothed him some. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped that on you. It’s just a scheduling snafu. I’ll sort it out.” He smiled at the familiar feel of her body pressed against his, the smell of her perfume. “Here, give me the boy. You sit.”
Emre relinquished bottle duty. His brain spun, going nine hundred miles an hour for some reason. He sat before he fell over. “Christ. I have to go back, Elle. We can’t keep avoiding this.” He leaned back in the kitchen chair, stretching his legs out in front of him, trying to dispel some of the weird tension he’d developed. Then leveled his gaze at the woman he’d fallen for so hard, married, followed to the States, fathered two children with, and nearly lost at the birth of the son in her arms. “I’m the only one left. I have to.”
She stayed silent. He knew this did not bode well for his bombshell. When she spoke it was quietly as if she were talking to herself. “I know. But I don’t know how we can make it work.”
He stared at her, a slow fury roiling through him. “It’s pretty simple, Elle. We move back to Istanbul. I take over my family’s business.” He clenched his jaw, waiting for her response, the ache between his eyes settling in for a nice long stay.
“Emre, I can’t leave. Not now. It’s…too soon.”
He stood and walked to the sink, clenching his hands on its cool stainless steel edges. The moment of truth upon him, sooner than he wanted, but Tarkan’s sudden death had changed everything including this.
“You knew this was mine. You knew it when we married. We discussed it. I realize that my brother’s death has brought it on quicker than we planned, but now it’s here—and you think you can just back out? Stay behind? Where do the kids live?” He couldn’t turn and face her. His heart pounded in his ears. The repeated buzzing of a phone call from the bedroom only made him more aggravated. “You are only three years from full pension retirement. If you go now, what does that mean? A few bucks less a year? Do you think you need it? That I won’t provide for my family the way it’s used to?” His head hung between his shoulders as he glared at the expensive glass backsplash tiles. Anger surged through him, took over and made him say the most amazingly stupid things before he could stop himself. He turned and crossed his arms. Elle’s green eyes stayed neutral as she stood.
“I’m putting him down now. I’ll be back. Please, hold that thought.”
Emre raised an eyebrow at her tone. Great. This was just fucking great. By the time she returned she was staring at his phone’s screen, a puzzled look on her face. “Caleb has called you three times.” Her voice stayed low as she spoke and handed the device over.
He took it from her and turned it off. “No distractions, Elle. We have to talk. Really talk.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s not about money. I have no doubts about your ability to provide for us. I’m sorry if I ever gave you any other impression than that.” Freezing rain would have been warmer than her tone. He turned away but her hands on his arms held him still. “I earned this.” He stared at her. “This isn’t just some job, you know? I’ve worked for over twenty years to get here.
This
is mine.” She tried to hug him but he held her off, disbelief at her words rendering him speechless.
“So, it’s yours versus mine then, is it?” He kept his own tone low.
She dropped her arms to her sides. “Just three more years, Emre. Your family is healthy. Your father can handle it.”
A rare fury coursed through him. He was so fucking tired, in mind and body. And this essential truth came out. She wasn’t going to give, not one inch. His chest felt tight, and his heart pounded in his temples. He tried to keep his voice even. “Elle, they honestly think I will show up any day now, American family in tow and settle in to take over. Do you have
any
idea what kind of fucking pressure that is?” He turned from her, put his hands against the cool glass of the sliding glass door and attempted to calm his anger before he really got into deep shit.
“Pressure? Seriously? You are asking me if I know what pressure from people who expect things from me on a daily basis feels like? You are…. Gah.” She tried to walk out, but it was his turn to halt the disintegration of this conversation. It was too crucial. He grabbed her arm as she tried to leave the room. She glared at him, her face set in a way he knew all too well.
“That’s not what I meant. I….” He took a breath. “I’m not here at your God damned leisure you know? I had a purpose. A goal. I was…supposed to…shit!” Temper made him nearly blind. How could she not see? Why did have to draw her a fucking picture? His hand fell on something. He gripped it and heaved it at the expanse of glass. The noise was satisfyingly horrific. Elle stood, arms crossed, no reaction whatsoever. He stared at the gargantuan mess with a small amount of pleasure and a large amount of remorse. “Fuck it.” He muttered. “It’s Elle’s way or the highway, I know. I’m just here to please you. To make more babies and put your fucking life at risk. I nearly lost you, have you forgotten? Because you wanted another kid and I didn’t? What kind of man am I?”
Her voice was low as she held out an arm to stop him from passing. “Don’t you dare say it, Emre Deniz. Don’t even think it.” Her voice broke, and he sank into the nearest chair. She walked to the broom closet, ostensibly to start cleaning up his mess but he knew that movement served to keep her temper at bay. Emre put his head in his hands. Christ, if he could only get a decent night’s sleep, he wouldn’t be so on edge. She swept, and emptied the mess into the large bin, put the broom away, and pulled him to his feet, buried her face in his chest. Cool air from his tantrum-fueled remodeling caressed them both.
“I’m sorry, my love. I’m…selfish. I…don’t think of you that way. You are my husband, my only love, my partner.” She looked up at him then, and his chest released its death grip.
“Elle, I can’t leave you. But I cannot leave my parents alone any longer either. Why don’t
you
figure this one out and just tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do? I can’t make any more decisions—I can hardly think straight. I can’t even bloody well sleep at night lately.” They stood, together, for a moment before Emre broke the embrace. He held onto both of her arms, stared into her eyes. “Honestly, Elle. I have no idea what to do. But I do know this, I’m gonna stay here and try to catch a nap. Can you pick Lale up from the airport? Taking the whole gang seems like a colossally bad plan right now.” He sank into the chair again, put his head on his arms on the glass-topped table littered with Cheerios, sour-milk-smelling towels, Ayla’s crayons, the detritus of parenthood. Elle rubbed his shoulders.
“Sure, no problem. Let her know though. She lands in a couple of hours and expects all of us.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. Suddenly, the scent of her filled his nose and he needed her, needed to feel all of her to know she was his, really, truly with him. He rose to his feet and yanked her slight form against his. His cock was rock hard in an instant. He was desperate to be inside her and slanted his lips over hers, swept his tongue into her mouth as her body curved into his. She propped a foot on the chair he’d just vacated and ground against him, burying her hands in his hair. A dizzy sensation of fear for their future, for his children, his parents engulfed him. But tinged with no small measure of unbridled lust.
He picked her up with little effort, never removing his lips from hers, and carried her to their bedroom, taking a minute to pull Ayla’s door shut. She was asleep on her bed, clutching the ratty teddy bear Caleb and Tarkan had given her when she was born.
Elle nuzzled his neck, making his body break out in chills. He groaned and kicked their door shut behind him. Then tossed her up on the king sized bed and yanked her shorts down as he unzipped his jeans with his other hand. He crawled up between her bare legs, shoving her shirt up, tugging first one, then the other hard, pink nipple between his lips. She arched up, moaning, wrapped both legs around him. He plunged into her with little preamble, crying out at the sensation, at the connection he craved, pounding into her again and again as he kept kissing her, trying to prove what he wanted.
She broke from his lips and stared at him. “I love you, Emre. I will never, ever stop loving you. I…oh God, yes!” Emre adjusted his angle, yanking her hips up, burying his entire length in her luscious depths. As he ground his pubic bone against her clit, he moaned at the feel of her fingernails on his ass. This animal need to take her, possess, prove something, to himself or to her, was strong. It took over, made him uncharacteristically rough. “Fuck me, Emre. Harder.” She let go of him and gripped the headboard, raising her hips higher, clamping down on his cock with her inner muscles. “I want it. Give it to me.”
He closed his eyes. Let the moment take him. For the first time in his adult sexual life utterly unconcerned with his partner’s need and focused on his own. He growled deep in his throat as the orgasm burst up from the base of his spine, and his hips moved of their own accord, giving him some small measure of relief. “Oh, God!” He tried to hold back the yell but he couldn’t. Their cries of pleasure combined, circled around in his lizard brain as he kept coming, kept pounding, unable to stop.
“Mmmm…yes….” Elle reached up, wrapped arms and legs around him, and clung to him as he filled her body. “That’s it, my love. That’s what I wanted.”
“Dear God.” He felt light-headed as she released him and fell back. He pulled out, shocked at himself, but fighting the sensation to pass out. He flopped down beside her, pulled her to his chest. “I’m sorry…I….” His jaw cracked with the force of his yawn.
Elle snuggled into his side. “Don’t you ever apologize for that, husband. It was fabulous.”
“Don’t forget about the airport pick up.” His voice was slow, slurred as his brain went into complete shutdown. “Oh and see what Caleb needed from me.”
“I’ve got it all.” She sat up and left him, pulling the duvet over his naked form.
“Thanks.” He muttered before sleep took him. “I love you, Elle.” He rolled over to his side and relaxed for the first time in what felt like weeks.
***
Elle stretched and watched her husband sink into sleep. They hadn’t been together like that in months. She tingled from head to toe and smiled as she made her way into the bathroom to clean up, grabbing her phone on the way, thinking to call Caleb back before heading to LAX to pick up her sister-in-law. Yeah, they had some tough decisions to make but she made a mental note to call Vivian and have a heart to heart about it with her. Her mother-in-law was level-headed and practical. She’d help her convince Emre to wait until Elle could serve out the needed three more years to receive her full, substantial pension. Then they could move. She had no qualms about raising her children in Istanbul. That wasn’t the issue.
She splashed water on her face, observing how recent years of pregnancy, parenthood and a serious brush with death during Aslan’s birth had deepened the lines around her eyes. The past years had spun out in a blur of happiness, then tragedy, once she and Emre had married, and his parents had accepted her, a woman fifteen years his senior, into their close-knit circle. Then, dealing with her friend Caleb’s near breakdown after Tarkan’s death. She frowned at the phone’s small screen. Four missed calls and two terse “Call me now” texts from Caleb. What the hell? She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and called him back.