In a flash, I was pinned to the wall with Aspen’s mouth on mine, his hands cupping my head gently. I kissed him back, grabbing handfuls of his hair as I pulled it out of his tie. When we pulled apart both of us were panting heavily, staring into each other’s eyes.
“I wanted you so badly, but I tried to behave. I
tried
to keep it just showering. You seemed so focused on something, like you didn’t want to think about anything. I thought you wanted a distraction. I thought you wanted a distraction with
me
. I love you, Cara. I
thought
you were turning to me to make all the crazy go away and love on you, bring you some pleasure after I brought you pain. You made that pain comment and I just, I put the pieces together wrong. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” I sighed, leaning my head against his chest. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I was in
no
place to be having sex or testing you. I’m not that person, so underhanded like that. I just didn’t see a way to ask the question I needed without getting the answer I wanted because it was the only
decent
answer.”
“So are we done with that part of all of this?” Teak asked quietly.
“Yeah, we’re done,” I answered, staring up at Aspen who nodded.
“Welcome to life with a born diplomat,” Aspen chuckled before giving me another soft kiss. “Never is there lingering anger or arguments with us.”
“That’s not a bad thing.” I shot Teak a smile as I pulled away from Aspen, grateful that at least something was off the massive fucking plate o’ shit. “All right, what are you fixing next, Prince Teak?”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, anger and something
else
in his eyes strong enough I took a step back. And then another.
I was scared. I’d never
been
scared around them before but they’d come out of the closet so to speak and had told me how powerful they were and all of that. Fear was normal now, I guessed.
“Right, sorry, of course,” I muttered, backing away some more and snagging my smokes as if I’d just needed a break, and walked out on the porch. It took me a few tries to light it, and when I did, I sat on the bench seat and pulled my knees to my chest.
“Jesus, your hand is shaking,” Cypress whispered as they quietly joined me.
“I don’t do well with confrontation,” I admitted, not looking at them. “Add to that you guys are filling me in on how all powerful you are and Teak’s eyes just filled with something I don’t even know what because I called him Prince Teak and it scared me. And he’s the
least
scary of the three of you. And we were just getting back on better ground. So now I’m sitting here thinking that this is how it’s always going to be, isn’t it? I’m always walking some tight rope I don’t understand, teetering on it.”
“No,
no
, Cara,” Teak sighed, squatting down on the other end of the bench seat, careful not to touch me or join me but so I could see him. “We both just reacted like that because of everything going on. Once we get through this, things will go back to easy and great like they were. It was always easy to be around each other because we mesh. You aren’t the only one who’s a bit broken at times. I
hate
being Prince Teak and just never Teak. Here, now, with you guys, I get to be Teak. I don’t want that to change.”
“And it kinda sounded like you were teasing him about being a Prince,” Cypress added gently. “It’s not a joke in our world, honey.”
I thought about that, one more thing to consider, and nodded. “I guess it could have but I didn’t mean it that way. More
wow, there’s really a fucking
Prince
standing right here in my kitchen who’s kissed me and get a grip on your shit Cara because this is real.
”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you then,” Teak mumbled, hanging his head. “I have wounds too. I’ll tell you later with more of the story, but yeah. Lots of wounds. Please don’t be afraid of me. I won’t
ever
hurt you, Cara. I swear it.”
I did the only thing a woman could when the man she loved was hurting… I went to him. I put out my smoke and got to my feet, holding out my hand and wiggling it until he looked up. “Okay, so what was this secret you wanted to share with me before we started talking about my fake brain surgery?”
“So we settled how we’re handling the fan thing?” Cypress asked, pulling out a note pad after Teak nodded to him while taking my hand. “We’re getting you some public relations guru and spinning something of a misdiagnosis in a press release.”
All three of them stared at me like hopeful kids at Christmas waiting for me to accept help clearing up one of their sins. “Sure, fine, whatever,” I chuckled as I shook my head. “Not sure what we’re going to tell my friends and family but—”
“Tiny tumor sucked out through your nose,” Teak blurted out. “We called our lawyer, and if a hospital fucks up, it’s common they’ll pay for you to go somewhere
not
under their purview to avoiding compounding the potential error. So we call your peoples and tell them that you’re being whisked away to
wherever
, it’s like a couple day thing, they can come visit when you’re home and our badass lawyer handled the whole thing for free, because when you got home from Chicago, you finally spilled the beans to us and we were overbearing and stepped in.”
“Teak, that…” I shut my mouth mid-argument and thought it over. That could work actually. Except… “What about
actually
cleaning up this mess instead of just the cover story? I mean, I have bills piling up—”
“We’re rich,” Cypress snickered as he closed the deck door behind us. “Well, technically Teak is, but yeah, it’s a joint account.”
“No,”
I growled, spinning around on all of them. “No, no,
no
.”
“We broke it, we buy it,” Teak quoted me. “We screwed up your finances, we fix them. Think of it as us donating some money to Omaha’s hospital systems instead of replenishing your accounts. You would never have had to pay all that money if we had just told you what was going on.”
“Maybe,” I finally sighed after a few moments, knowing he was right. It was valid point, one I completely agreed with… I simply didn’t like taking their money. Plus, I
did
get something out of all of this. I mean, I was in the best shape of my life, health-wise and whatnot. It would have been a great gift if they had just told me. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all we ask,” Aspen purred, moving in and kissing my cheek. Then Cypress did, next Teak as he took my hand again.
Next thing I knew he was sitting me down at my desk and booting up my computer. He nodded at the screen when the password prompt came up and then clicked on Word to open a blank document after the desktop loaded.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you up to, Teak?”
“You’ll see,” he chuckled before taking a couple of slow, deep breaths. “Okay, close your eyes and think about the shower this morning with Aspen. Start at the beginning. He carried you down there, right?”
“Yeeeeeeah.”
“Put your hands on the desk and then think through what happened as if you were going to write it in one of your books, every detail, ever word spoken.”
“Teak, this is—”
“
Please
, Cara,” he breathed, kissing my forehead. “Just trust me, okay?”
“Okay,” I sighed, closing my eyes. I centered myself and felt his hand cover mine on the desk. Then I did what he asked, letting my mind go through the whole scene like a movie as if I was writing, typing it all out on the keys. I stopped after the fight on the porch right before Teak started telling us his story about the little Prince. “Done.”
“Open your eyes,” Cypress chuckled, he and Aspen in the office with us.
I did and almost fell out of my desk chair. Then I pulled my hands out from under Teak’s and rubbed my eyes before reaching for my mouse. I quickly scrolled through the six Word pages that would probably be at least nine book pages and scanned it.
“That’s—” I breathed, not even able to finish the thought.
“Everything?” he asked, glancing at it over my shoulder. I nodded.
“That’s four thousand words in
minutes
, Teak,” I whispered, glancing from him to it. “I mean, there’s some punctuation missing and paragraph mix-ups, but nothing a quick look through wouldn’t fix.
Definitely
more description than I normally put in my books.”
He shrugged. “You can take that back out.”
“No
way
,” I chuckled, smiling up at him. “One of my biggest faults is that I race through my plots because I’m so excited to tell the story and forget to stop and show what I see better. Fuck, you just did better than
I
do over hours in
minutes
!” I pushed him back a bit before getting to my feet and jumping into his arms. “Oh my
god
, Teak!”
“So, you like my magic?”
“I
love
your magic,” I gushed, peppering kisses all over his face. “I get to relieve the months of pressure building up and get the crazy out!” Then I grabbed his arm while he was still recovering from my outburst and dragged him after me, Teak stumbling along. “You guys aren’t following.”
“Um,
okay
,” Aspen snickered.
“I wish
I
knew how to get her books onto the computer for her after seeing how she reacts,” Cypress bitched.
I just bet he did because I was
ecstatic
. And I wanted to thank Teak properly. I kicked the door to my bedroom closed once we were alone and pushed him towards the bed.
“Cara?” he whispered as he bounced against the mattress but not on it because it was so high.
“Yes, Teak?” I purred as I tapped under his thigh, signaling where he should go. He hopped up, and I joined him, climbing on top of him. I pushed up his shirt and kissed his stomach, almost laughing that the
one
time they actually wore shirts to my house they seemed to be getting in my way.
“Cara, what are we doing?”
“I thought that was obvious. I’m thanking you.” I licked his nipple, and he moaned, his flip flops hitting the floor with a thunk as I lost my cotton wrap.
“I’ve never been with—”
“A human, I know.” I helped him move up the bed more, and he took off his shirt before I made fast work of his shorts and boy shorts. I leaned up for a moment just to stare at him. “Fuck, you are perfect, Teak.”
“Thanks,” he panted, his toned, muscular chest heaving. “I thought we weren’t doing any of this today? You said you weren’t—”
“I know.” I leaned down and kissed his chest, sucking up a mark before moving down his ribs.
“What changed? That I could help your work.”
“That. But not just that.”
“What then? Please? I’m so confused. I don’t want to screw up like Aspen and
hurt you
!”
I froze, realizing how bad this could seem to him. I moved to straddle his lap and took off my shirt, slowly guiding his hands to my breasts as I leaned over so our faces were almost touching. “Teak, when did you think to use your magic to help me like that?”
“A week or so after we met,” he answered, worrying his lip as his hands played with my tits and he went even harder under me. “You said something about being frustrated because you just couldn’t get the scene down right like you saw it in your head and I thought maybe I could help. So I asked Cypress and Aspen and made them experiment with me until I figured out how to do it.”
I’d been right. He’d thought this up long before I’d been pissed with them. This wasn’t some apology or trick he’d learned a while back. Teak had done this for me because he cared.
“That’s why I’m thanking you, Teak,” I whispered against his lips. “You saw me for who I was and wanted to help me
be
who I am. Do you realize how amazing that is?”
He shrugged, clearly saying he didn’t, it was just his way. “I love you, Cara.”
“I love you too, Teak,” I admitted, saying the words beyond telling them I’d given them my heart and adding profanities. His eyes lit up, and he grabbed the back of my head, kissing me with everything he had. But I had some thanking to get to. So I shimmied along his body and swallowed him down as best as I could for someone out of practice.
“Oh
fuck
!” he cried out, spreading his legs wider for me. “I always blow them. They never blow me. Shit, this is
amazing
. I think it’s like a thing with them. They’re weird about my station still and don’t want to get on their knees for me like they’re the Prince’s whores or they just like fucking me too much. I don’t know but—”
I pulled off his cock and stared him down. “Teak, shut up and enjoy it. We can talk later. They’re not here. You and I are, and
I’m
thanking you. I don’t care what your station is. I’m Cara and you’re Teak and this is my goddamn bedroom. Nothing else matters besides I want to suck your cock, okay?” He took a deep breath and smiled. “Do you want me to suck your cock now?”