Second Chances (24 page)

“Look at me.” Grey stopped moving, waiting on her to open her eyes. His words didn’t register at first. Why had he stopped moving? “Claira, baby, open your eyes and look at me.”

Eyes open? Look at him? Claira’s eyes sluggishly obeyed his command and opened to see his beautiful face, like a powerful warrior, hovering over her.
Safe.
She would always be safe in his arms. His eyes were so different; the bright green turned dark was nearly eclipsed by his black pupils. He began to move again, this time agonizingly slow, as he stared down at her. His hips moved above her as he pulled out slowly, almost completely, and then thrust hard against her pelvis, the tip of his penis bumping against her womb.

“
Ahhh,” Claira hissed at the jarring pressure. When he stopped she tensed, reading the concern in his eyes. “Oh, please don’t stop,” she breathlessly begged.

That was all Grey needed to stake his claim. He would mark her forever as his, as theirs. “So…fucking…beautiful…I can’t…get….
ahhhh….enough.” Grey thrust deep and hard, feeling the tip of his cock tap the end of her velvet channel with each stroke. He was drowning in her eyes, losing himself in her wet, hot depths.

“Grey!
Oh, God!”

The sound of his name echoing in her screams made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. His scalp began to tingle and his balls drew up tight. The muscles in his arms and legs bunched and burned with the force and speed he demanded from them.
His! Theirs! His! Mine!
When he felt her teeth sink into the skin of his left bicep and her pussy flood and pulse with her release, he exploded. Over and over he plunged, emptying himself deep inside her as she marked him, claimed him as her own.

“Oh, fuck, baby
,” he panted, his hips still convulsing in response to her own residual spasms. His frantic breaths mingled with hers. Collapsing over her, his quivering arms gave out under his own weight. “That was…”

“Oh, Grey.” Claira panted into the side of his sweat slickened neck, her hands still clutching the tight muscles in his back. She wasn’t ignorant of the euphoric perpetuation of
emotional attachment after sex, but she knew her feelings weren’t caused by a heightened sexual experience. She loved him, with all her heart. She would love him and his brothers forever.

“Hey, don’t cry
.” Grey’s thumb gently wiped away a tear that had escaped. “Did I hurt you?”

Claira shook her head, not trusting herself to speak at that moment. The last thing she needed was to ruin possibly the best moment of her life with a whiney tear fest.
She tried to smile, but she felt her lips quiver with the effort. He was too good to be true and she had never felt this complete in her entire life.

S
he was just about to tell him that very thing when something changed in his expression and he suddenly rolled off and away from her. “Fuck!” He jumped to his feet, his legs tangling in his Wranglers which were down around his knees.

“Goddammit!
I can’t believe I just did that!” He didn’t even have the class or sense of mind to take off his boots before he fucked her senseless, and he forgot to wear a damn condom! How could he, of all people, forget something so vitally important? He was such a jackass, fucktard! He pulled his pants up and stuffed his now completely flaccid cock back behind the zipper and buttoned up. He wondered how he would ever satisfy his constant need for her. Now he knew. His blow hard buddy wasn’t so excited about going through
that
again, now was he!
Serves you right you stupid, sorry fucker!

“Claira, I’m so sorry.”

Claira froze, her heart taking a nose dive into the pits of hell. He was rejecting her. She had never felt more loved or happy in her entire life and he was
sorry?
How could she be so stupid? His mouth kept moving, saying something with an apology if his expression matched his words, but Claira didn’t hear anything over the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
She scrambled to her feet and pulled her skirt down. Reaching for her tattered shirt, she jerked away from Grey as he tried to take it from her grasping hand.

“Don’t touch me.” She
clasped the ribbons left of her shirt to her chest, trying desperately to reclaim some form of modesty and pride.

“Claira?”

She turned to see Matt and Mason standing just inside the barn, their faces marred with confusion and outrage. They took in her disheveled state and their eyes burned like lasers cutting through the air as they turned their sights on Grey.

She couldn’t do this. She had been so selfish and stupid. This was never going to work.
Never going to be her home. Suddenly she could see that now. Everything was so clear. Grey must hate her to be so cruel. No, he hadn’t meant to be. It was her fault for thinking she deserved a life with them. A sudden snapshot of her father’s henchmen carrying her dead brother away from her flashed through her mind. No. She didn’t deserve them.

Claira
stifled a sob and ran past Matt and Mason, making a bee line for their house. She had everything she needed in her bag up stairs. She would hate not saying goodbye to Con and Car, but it was all she could do to make things right. She had to leave. Now.

What the fuck just happened here?
Grey stood frozen in the cool barn as he watched their frantic woman run past his brothers.

“That’s exactly what we’d like to know.” Mason stalked up to him.

Grey shook his head, trying to make sense of what he’d just seen. “I…I didn’t use a condom”. God, he hadn’t used a condom. He couldn’t be much more of an idiot if he’d tried, but damn if he could make sense of her running out like that. “Surely she would know we’d take care of her if something happened.”

“If something happened?”
Matt stalked up to stand next to Mason. “You mean if she gets pregnant?” He pushed Grey back a step. “Right, Grey? Because God forbid we go through
that
again.”

“Of course not!
But what does that have to do with this? I need to go to her!” Grey pushed past Matt but Mason stepped in front of him, blocking him from moving. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Mason stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. “
If she saw the same look on your face that we just did, I’d say you are probably the last person she wants to see right now.”

Grey’s head snapped back. “What look?”

Mason stepped around him and Grey followed his movements. He didn’t have time for this shit. He needed to get to Claira and find out what he’d done.

“Did you really regret fucking her, Grey?” Matt
crossed his arms over his chest and studied his older brother.

“What?”
If his little brother didn’t shut the hell up, and quick, he was going to regret being born.

“T
hat’s what it sounded and looked like to me.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Grey turned to go after Claira but stopped when he heard Mason mumble something behind him. He turned back and stalked up to Mason, got in his face and dared him to repeat himself.

“You used her.” Mason didn’t mumble this time. He stared right into his brothers guilty eyes. “You sorry sonofabitch. You used her. Now you feel guilty and you think you can just say you’re
sorry
and everything will just go back to the way it was? As if you didn’t just
fuck
her, and us, over the coals?”

They had it wrong! “It wasn’t like that
! I said I was sorry for not using a condom! Not that I was sorry I fucked her! And I didn’t just
fuck
her, okay! Quit saying it like that! God damn it, I’m in love her!”

“That’s bullshit!” Matt snapped
and pointed to the nest of hay on the floor. “If you loved her she would be wrapped in your arms on that blanket right now and not in her room crying her eyes out! Why are you so damn determined to fuck this up, Grey? Why?”

When Grey didn’t move or even attempt to deny it
, Mason made one final push. “Why do you hate yourself so much that you can’t allow her in?”

Everything inside Grey
felt like it was breaking all over again, just like it did when they lost Sarah. Only this time it was a hundred times worse. His chest ached, his skin felt like it was too small for his body, his eyes burned with tears he had no way of fighting. Could she really love him? If only they knew what a bastard he really was. The bastard that had killed their wife and nearly killed their unborn sons. He’d never told anyone what had happened the day Sarah died, not even his brothers. If they knew….

“Answer me
,
goddammit
!” Mason demanded. “We can’t go on as a family like this any longer!”

“I killed Sarah.” he
bit out, a single tear flowed from the corner of his left eye, down his cheek. His jaw clenched tighter than his fists at his side. “I killed her. Is that good enough for you? ”

Claira
gasped, and then nearly collapsed as his words hit her with the force of a freight train. An invisible hand clamped around her heart and nearly squeezed the life out of it. Three sets of eyes turned to see her standing in the doorway. She’d heard them arguing as she walked to her car, bag in hand, and couldn’t stand the thought of them fighting over her. She looked into Grey’s tortured eyes and she could barely breathe through the pain she saw there. “Wh…what?”

Grey shook his head and another tear escaped, quickly followed by more. Disg
usted with his weakness he turned his back on her to hide his ugly guilt. He should have never said a word, but something had broken lose inside him, while he was inside of her, and he could no longer hold any of it back, not even his fucking tears.

“You know, I prayed to die. I prayed for God to take me instead of her.” He paced to the other side of the aisle, his hands fisted in his hair. “No matter what happened, she didn’t deserve to die. She deserved so much better than a bastard like me.”

“Grey, you’re talking nonsense.” Matt tried to step in front of him but Grey just turned and paced in the other direction.

Claira stood f
rozen in the doorway, her heart skipping every other beat, her breaths catching in her throat as she watched Grey fall apart right in front of her.

“She knew she had a heart condition,” Grey continued, now rooted in place a meager t
hree feet in front of her. He might as well have been a million miles away as he re-lived the worst day of his life. Claira glanced over at his brothers to see the twin expressions of shock on their faces.

“That morning, I was standing in the kitchen watching my beautiful, pregnant wife butter toast, thinking how incredible it was that she carried my sons in her swollen belly. She’d been distant since her latest check-up and I was afraid something was wrong with her or the babies, but she kept telling us everything was fine.

“I pressed her again that morning to tell me what was wrong and she broke down in tears. She told me about her heart problem. She was scared because the doctor had warned her not to get pregnant. She’d ignored the doctor and pushed us to start a family, never
once
telling us about the risks.”

“Son of a bitch.”
Mason growled under his breath. Matt glanced over at his twin and noticed he, too, looked as if he were going to puke.

Grey’s fist
came back and plowed into one of the stall door across from them. He slid to his knees holding his bleeding and battered hand to his chest, his shoulders shaking with his silent sobs.

Claira ran to his side and tried to wrap herself around him. “Grey, please let me,” she begged when he flinched and pulled away from her. “It wasn’t your fault. She knew the risks she took. It was a bad choice to get pregnant, and
a huge mistake not to tell you. It was her mistake, Grey, not yours.”

Grey’s head shook violently. “No!” He pushed
her away and tried to stand but fell on his ass in the dirt. “One minute I was watching my own miracle making fucking breakfast, and then I watched it all slip away. I was so pissed at her. I couldn’t imagine feeling more betrayed. She’d lied to me, to us. I said some of the worst things I’ve ever said to anyone.” He felt his heart stop when the memory of his hurtful words invaded his mind.
Why didn’t you just kill yourself and save us all the worry?
God, how could he have been such an asshole? 

“How could she put herself at risk like that?
” Matt leaned against the barn wall and slid to the floor next to Grey. “I would have, we
all
would have been okay with adopting children, or even
no
children!”

“It wasn’t your fault, Grey. It was her dec
ision to hide the truth from us. Maybe not your words, but your anger was justified.” Mason crouched down in front of Grey, feeling every bit as if he was going to pass out. He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, not believing what he was hearing yet knowing Grey would never lie about this. “Hell, I’m in total shock right now but I’m sure I’m going to be just a pissed when that passes.”