She brought my hand to her lips and held it there.

I kept talking. “Everyone was unhappy about it. I didn't want to leave my home, or for my gran to die, or to go live with a father I'd never met, and who didn’t want me any more than I wanted him.”

She gripped my hand tighter.

“He had a wife who really didn’t want me around—messing up their perfect little family life in England, bringing up questions, destroying the façade of respectability they’d earned. They had a three-year-old son already. Sam—their real son.”

"So, you came to live with your father and that's when we met you?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for any of us. As soon as I was delivered to my father’s house and got a good feeling for how things were going to be with my new family, I ran away, sneaking off almost immediately, hitching rides all the way back to Scotland. It took a while, but they found me trying to live in the back of my gran’s garage. My dad sent me off directly to school in London after that mess so I didn’t have to live with them, and since our last names were different, nobody connected us as father and son. I was just a kid dumped at school by people who liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Elaina was quiet for a bit, just holding my hand to her lips and absorbing everything I’d told her. When she finally spoke, her voice had a detached ring to it as if she were making a confession. “I always hated your family. I never met them but I hated them just the same for how uncaring they were of you.”

God, I loved her. “I always sort of sensed that from you, Cherry. Just made me love you more though.”

She wasn’t done. “But then I probably shouldn’t hate them, because if they hadn’t been so awful we might never have met you. Ian wouldn’t have befriended you and dragged you home to us.” She leaned up to find my lips for a kiss.

I clung to her as if she were a lifeline. “Your family probably saved my life,” I whispered, holding her face close.

"How did we do that?" I could see tears in her eyes and knew it hurt her to hear all this horrible shit. I hoped it was the last time I ever had to speak of it with her. Elaina was only part of the good things that had happened in my life. She was the light to all that darkness. I was relieved to now know how that all the sorry sad rest of my past just didn’t matter to me anymore.

“By wanting me. You always wanted me, Cherry, and I don’t know why you did, but I do know that it was the thing that saved me. You and your family saved me.”

She nodded and let out a sob. “Always did…and always will.” Her hand started moving, rubbing over the place where my heart beat and the blood was pumped, showing me the truth behind her lovely words.

“But, I don’t want you to dwell on it. Please, for me, don’t think about it anymore because it’s over and just doesn’t matter. I survived because of you, and more importantly, I have you now. You’re mine.” I smiled. “That’s all I care about.” I kissed her for a long time.

I held onto my Cherry Girl. I held her up against my heart, in that little rowboat on the idyllic lake, at the splendid English estate that felt like something out of a Dickens’ novel, and knew pretty much what complete happiness felt like for the first time in my adult life.

All the sad shit and the f**ked up past was well behind us, where it belonged. I figured we only had good in our future to look forward to together.

No words could do justice to what I’d just shared with Elaina in such a very special place. It was that meaningful to me. I certainly couldn’t find the right words to express what it meant to me to know that she’d always loved me and wanted me…just because she did. No other reason, than that the path of her heart led her to me. A miracle. I couldn’t rationalize it and I wouldn’t even attempt to figure out why things played out the way that they did with us.

I made a decision to just believe in fate right then and there. Done. I wouldn’t question the how’s or the why’s of it anymore, but simply accept the gift of fate I’d been given with my Elaina.

I’d hold the memory of this beautiful time together with her, keeping it safe inside me where I could revisit whenever I needed to so I could make it through the next ten months of being apart.

And that time was coming far, far too soon.

11

The enormous bathtub had a view to rival the best scenic vistas on any travel documentary, but I wasn’t looking or caring about it. No, my attention was elsewhere. And my view was much more spectacular.

Elaina naked was breathtaking. Elaina, naked and wet in the bath with me, even more so. Elaina, naked, wet and sucking on my cock, was probably going to render me blind in the next minute or two. If I wasn’t dead by then.

She worked me over good, drawing the length deep and pulling back with a little twist of her hand on each stroke. I held her long hair back from her face and let her take me to heaven.

“Oh f**k, f**k, f**k…that’s it—I’m going off!”

I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let go and the wet warmth of her mouth felt too good against the bare flesh of my cock. I couldn’t stop the force of the spunk that exploded from me, and worried about choking her, but I was too far gone to do much of anything about it. My state of control over myself had come and gone. I’d come hard.

She took it all down her throat while I shuddered and pulsed, feeling like I shouldn’t do that to her, but it felt too f**kin’ good to stop. I was a slave to her love and very happy to my lot in life.

“God, girl, you’re gonna kill me,” I panted through the after rush of my orgasm.

She released me from her lips and grinned like the devil, wiping the corner of her mouth with a finger.

I groaned from the sheer  p**n ographic lust she instilled in me. In a very good way of course, but still… “Yeah, I’m dyin’ for sure.”

“Nope. No killing you off, Captain. No dying allowed, either.” Her hand still gripping ’round my cock, she stroked me slowly, still managing to keep me hard, which was not really an issue ever with her. I wanted Elaina all the time, and she was so generous with me; I just took and took some more. If she wanted me, I was ready to serve which was just another reason to be careful with the extra protection. With all the spunk going off from all the sex, it would just be a matter of time until I knocked her up. I couldn’t let that happen.