Page 58 of Recipes for Life

“Not yet, pretty girl. Can I?”

I looked over at him in a lust-filled gaze and saw he was stroking his cock. I'd forgotten what a sight it was—large, with the perfect mushroom top, veiny in all the right places that made me want to lick them. It was red at the top, and pre-cum had leaked out. I couldn’t help but lick my lips, and I heard Murphy groan,

“Please…” I spread my thighs even further, giving him all the permission he needed.

He grabbed a hold of my thighs and rubbed his cock over my pussy lips so damn slowly that I thought I was about to lose my mind at the sensations he was dragging out of me.

“Murphy…”

“I know, my love I know.”

I shivered at his term of endearment, and it was in that moment I felt his tip at my entrance. He slid in so painfully slow, letting me feel every inch of him, that I was a withering, pleading mess before he’d even gotten all the way in. I exploded around him, unable to stop my orgasm from happening.

“Fuck,fuck, fuck.”

My orgasm spurred Murphy’s, and I felt his dick pulse after his release, but he still didn’t move from inside of me. He lifted me up while still inside and then laid down on the bed with meon his chest. He was holding me so tightly that I knew he was convincing himself that this was real and not a dream.

Suddenly, I was exhausted, and a part of me kept waiting for the regret to seep in, but there was none, not a single trace of it. I let his fingers running through my hair lull me into sleep, feeling the most content that I have in years.

“I’ll love you in every lifetime.” I heard him whisper before I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 36

Odette

I woke up clinging to Murphy's naked torso, and I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of contentment—even being a few degrees too warm, no part of me wanted to untangle myself. As my brain slowly started to come back online, I realized how tight Murphy was holding me, squeezing my side, and I wondered if that’s why I woke. Or maybe it was the fact that I could hear him thinking from here.

“Murph…all that thinking you're doing woke me up.”

I felt his hand tense as if he were holding on for dear life.

“Murph…” I turned my face up to look at him, and I took in the unshed tears, his tense grip turning into soothing circles, and I reached out to touch his cheek.

“Murphy,” I said softly as he seemed lost in his own thoughts.

Finally, his eyes met mine as a tear fell, and I couldn’t help the hitch in my breath at what I saw there. He wasscared.

“What’s wrong, Murphy?”

He slowly slid down the bed and turned me over so his face was in the crook of my neck, and he just breathed me in, not answering my question. I wasn’t sure what was going on inside that brain of his, but I knew he was fighting some kind of internal war.

I slid my hands up to play with his hair to try to ease some of whatever it was he was feeling. It was then that I felt his body sag and fold into me, and I was startled when Murphy let out a barely concealed sob.

His grip around my waist became almost bruising, but I knew that this is what he needed—my closeness while he dealt with his demons, his regret, his guilt.

After a while, the tears subsided, and I didn’t even realize I had shed a few of my own.

“Words will never be able to describe how sorry I am…how stupid…how…” he croaked out, his words barely above a whisper. “I live with my regret every day, and I don’t deserve you, this, our family... But Ican’twalk away from you, Odette; I can’t walk away from Lux. If I'm destined for a life on the sidelines and shadows, loving you both from afar, then so be it. If you want to walk away from this, and this was closure for you, then I understand. I want you to have the lifeyouwant.”

I understood now what was going on inside Murphy's brain for the last half hour or so. He was doing his best to try to say goodbye to me. He was trying to give me closure if that’s what I needed, giving me an out to walk away. He was trying to let me know that no fault of this was mine, it was his alone.

My heart broke for him, for me, forus,but it was also in his arms that my heart started healing. I had questions,sure;I think we would spend our entire lives building up our relationship, and maybe marriage again.

“And what if the life I want is with you?” I whispered. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, Murphy. In fact, I think it’s going to be really hard. I think there will be days I don’t like you much, days I look at you andremember.I think there will be days you don’t likememuch. I think there will be good years andbad years, especially when Lux becomes a teenager and starts dating.”

That elicited a rumbling from Murphy, and I couldn’t help but laugh in the middle of my serious speech, but I kept going, wanting to lay all the cards out on the table.

“I think it will take time to build up trust and get to know each other fully again. I think there will be times I bring up the past as an excuse to hurt you because youhurtme, and I don’t think it will be easy.” My voice started to get shaky, and I had to hold back my tears. “I also think that I've spent the last three years searching foryou, but I had to find me first, and I think you had to do the same. I think I want to try because, in all the new hobbies I tried, I always wanted you with me. You and Lux were andarethe first things I think about in the morning when I wake up, and the last things I think about when I go to sleep. I think what we have is worth fighting for, and I think we should try again...if you want to, that is.”

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