Page 69 of Taeja

“Damon, wait,” Taeja said, hurrying toward him. He looked at her with his brows furrowed as she knelt before him and started undoing his belt. “I want to suck your dick while Zain watches, but I don’t want to breathe. I want you to fuck my mouth like it’s my pussy.”

After Taeja gave himwhat was no doubt the best blowjob of his life, Damonleft his house. He didn’t return to work. He went to a graveyard.

It’d been so long since he visitedher.

Seeing Taeja with Zain made him misshera bit more than he usually did.

A bone-chilling aura greeted him as he parked at the cemetery’s gated entrance. After years of showing up here, things weren’t much easier than the first time he set foot on the beaten-down stone path.

That was the funny thing with grief. There was no shortcut to getting over it. He could only allow himself to feel. Go through the motions. No matter how much he loathed this sharp pain in his chest.

Putting on his armor of bravery, Damon exited the car, then locked it behind him. He’d made this walk many times before, and each time, it ended the same.

With him. Here. Trailing a finger over the engraving onhergrave.

“I miss you,” Damon whispered, his voice sailing in the wind, joining the mix of people who were visiting their loved ones.

Some of them had companions by their sides. Someone to talk to. Someone with a shoulder to cry on.

For Damon? There was no easy way to say he had no one.

It was only him andher.

Eloise Washington-Stark.

13

Hours after he leftDamon’s house, night fell. Now, he was in bed with Taeja. She slept soundly beside him while he was tense. It’d been so long since he slept in the same bed as another person.

Before he’d crawled into the bed beside her, Taeja had said she didn’t mind sleeping in another room. Immediately, he denied, then silently cursed himself.

He didn’t want her to sleep in another room for two reasons. One, things were tense because of what was happening between him and Damon. Two, the other room was where Adelaide slept when they argued. He didn’t want to make things worse if Taeja knew that.

Heaving a sigh, he stirred.

“Can’t sleep?” came a whisper from beside him.

Zain tensed. “I thought you were sleeping.”

Taeja rolled over. “I can’t sleep.”

Zain rolled over, too. Now they were face-to-face, the room too dark to illuminate either of their features well. “Why not?” he asked.

“You’re going to think it’s stupid.”

His eyes narrowed, wondering why she’d ever imply that. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Taeja.”

“Stupid? Please, that’s the last word to describe me.”

“You’re always defensive, you know?”

“You, too,” she said, and his brows knitted more. “You are, Zain. Maybe notwith your words, but with your actions… Like how you’ve been scooting further away whenever I move.”

As guilty as he was, he didn’t let it show.

Taeja smirked. “There it is again.”

“What?”

---