“Oh god.” Seraphina lets out a breathy moan, and the way she’s squirming tells me she’s getting close. “That’s good. Keep talking, please.”
“When I get you alone this weekend, I’m going to eat your pussy until your legs start to shake and you’re begging me for release, and then I’m going to make you come so hard you make a dripping mess.” A drop of pre-cum beads at the tip of my cock and I brush my thumb over it as I keep stroking. My tempo increases, and she follows my lead, thrusting the toy faster. “And once I’m finished, I’m going to kiss you so you can taste how sweet you are.”
She sucks in a sharp breath, her cheeks flushed. “Then what?”
“I’m going to fuck that perfect little pussy like it’s mine.”
Her mouth falls open in a silent cry and her back arches off the bed, her head tipping back against the pillow. I follow right behind her as my hips jerk, warm release coating my hand. All of the tension that’s been brewing between us explodes in a blur of moans and breaths, whimpers and pleas.
It’s good—too fucking good, and exactly what I needed.
Seraphina picks up her phone and I do the same, putting us face to face on screen.
“Hi.” Her voice is breathy, her expression sated. A subtle sheen glistens across her forehead, her espresso eyes glassy and dazed. It’s nothing compared to what she’s going to look like when I’m finished with her this weekend. I’m going to fucking ruin her, and then I’m going to do it all over again.
“That’s going to live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life, Ser.”
She giggles. “It better.”
The post-orgasm haze clears completely, and my thought process returns to normal as my vitals regulate. It hits me that I don’t want to end our call. What I really want is to have her beside me, and I hate that I can’t.
“Time out?” I ask her.
“Deal.”
Setting down my phone, I quickly clean up and get dressed while she does the same. When I pick it up, she crawls onto her bed and gets beneath the covers, pulling them up to her chest. Her dark brown eyes fix on the screen, her expression pensive.
“So…” she trails off.
“So,” I say, leaning back against my pillows. “Tell me about your day, Tink.”
CHAPTER 20
A LITTLE EXTRA
SERAPHINA
Google is not my friend.
I should have waited until I had the results back from the genetic testing. Instead, I went ahead and dove headfirst into the scary side of the internet. Now I’m home alone while the guys are gone for a road game, and I’m freaking out.
Some preliminary research I’ve conducted says that if I have the BRCA mutation, my risk of developing breast cancer in my lifetime could be as high as almost eighty percent. That’s not including my chance of developing ovarian cancer, which would also be significant.
I throw myself down on the pile of clean clothes covering my duvet and hug a pillow to my chest, staring up at the ceiling while Doctor Wilson’s words echo through my head.
Fifty-fifty. That’s it. A simple coin toss.
It’s been weighing on me ever since that day in his office. I’ve tried to stuff it to the back of my mind as much as possible. Tried to pretend it never happened. Tried to believe everything will work out.
And I’ve been failing miserably.
Panic seizes hold of me and I reach for my phone, swiping into my message thread with Abby. I start to compose a text to her before I catch myself, holding down the backspace button to delete it in a single swoop. Navigating life or death decisions isn’t her forte. It’s not like she wouldn’t try, but she has no frame of reference for what I’m going through, and I can’t escape the feeling that she wouldn’t quite get it.
I stare at the screen for a few more seconds, debating whether to call one of my friends in Arizona instead. That doesn’t feel right, either. We’ve drifted apart in the short time since I’ve been here, and this seems like heavy subject matter to throw at someone I haven’t spoken to much lately.
Chase isn’t an option, obviously. That leaves Tyler. I almost wish I could tell him, but for what? I don’t even know one way or the other yet. He’s made it abundantly clear how much pressure he’s under, and I can’t see him wanting to add to that with my hypothetical problems.
Plus, something this heavy seems like it might be a little beyond his paygrade. He’s my friend—not my boyfriend. Part of me is afraid it might scare him away.
Then I remember a support website Doctor Wilson recommended to my mother during her appointment. Opening my MacBook, I enter the name into the search engine and pull it up, skimming through the posts in the aptly named “Limbo Land” forum. Everything I read confirms my gut instinct to do the testing. After all, I could be negative, which means I’d be able to move on with my life and focus on helping my mother get through her own treatment.
Or… I could be positive. Could be faced with the decision whether to wait and see if cancer catches up with me or take drastic preventative measures.
Either way, I need to know. The uncertainty will hang over my head until I do.
As I’m about to exit the site, another forum titled “Family and Relationships” catches my eye. I pause with my mouse hovering over the link, and curiosity compels me to click it.
After another couple of minutes sifting through the threads, my already fragile state of mind sails straight off a cliff. Post after post from women whose boyfriends and husbands bailed after finding out they were BRCA carriers. The details are different, but the underlying themes are all the same. They couldn’t empathize with the trauma of the diagnosis. Couldn’t face the prospect of their wife having major surgery. Couldn’t handle the caretaking after the procedure.
I wish I could say I’m surprised, but the news that so many men are lacking an empathy chip hardly comes as a shock.
Sure, there are exceptions. When I dig a little deeper, I find the occasional story from a user whose partner stood by her side, took care of her through everything, and was her rock. One man shaved his head when his wife was going through chemo as a gesture of solidarity while another took a leave of absence from work until his girlfriend was fully recovered from a double mastectomy.
I know unicorn men like that exist because that’s exactly how my brother would be if anything were to happen to Bailey. But in a sea of thousands of message board threads, those happy endings remain the exceptions—by a wide margin.
Seriously ill women divorce at a rate of over twenty percent versus three percent for men. Wait, what? That can’t be right. Blinking, I re-read the statistic again. A one in five possibility of losing your partner while you’re sick. My stomach balls into a knot at the potential implications.
Is that going to happen to my mother and Rick? Is he going to decide things are too difficult and bail when she’s at her most vulnerable? Even though I’ve never been a big fan of the guy, I like to think he’s better than that. No, he has to be better than that. She already lost my father; she can’t go through that again, least of all right now.
Blowing out a heavy exhale, I lean back in my desk chair. My breathing turns shaky, and the screen before me turns into a blur.