Just This Once (The Kings)

Next to Emily, I slept like the dead.

It was no secret that firefighters often struggled with healthy sleep habits—just a perk of the job, I guessed. But next to Emily? Wrapped around her soft body with the smell of my shampoo after I washed her hair—something I never could have imagined myself doing before her—I could rest for hours. Floating somewhere between dreaming and awake, I curled around her.

A good fuck was one thing, but last night had been altogether something new and unexpected. Emily had felt it too. I saw it on her face when our pace morphed into a gentle ebb and flow of reverent exploration. Gentle kisses. Whispers in the dark. Unspoken promises.

I should be exhausted after hours of tracing every line of her body and committing it to memory, but I was keyed up. I could slay a dragon or climb Everest.

It was a total mind fuck being this attracted to the one woman you couldn’t have. I pulled her closer and buried my face in her shoulder. “Stay with me.”noveldrama

“Mmm.” Emily hummed and pressed her ass into me. “I can’t. I have a planning lunch with the Bluebirds for the carnival.” She stretched and groaned before turning in my arms to face me. Her hand cupped over her mouth.

I frowned down at her, suppressing a laugh. “What are you doing?”

“I have kitten breath,” she said from behind her hand.

I grinned and pulled her hand from her face before planting a smacking kiss on her lips. “Can I feed you before you go?”

Her cheeks flushed before she glanced at the clock, noting the late morning hour. “I really need to get moving. You’re making a bum out of me.”

I stretched back in the bed, resting my hands behind my head as she sat up. “If you ask me, you worked overtime last night.”

My blood hummed just recalling how intensely satisfying it had been to watch her arch in pleasure as I worshiped her.

Emily stood, naked and unashamed, and flashed me a wicked smile over her shoulder. I stared at her bare ass as she confidently padded across the hardwoods and disappeared into the en suite bathroom. I closed my eyes and soaked in the moment, confident nothing could ruin a more perfect morning.

Well, my day was about to get absolutely shit on.

But damn if it wasn’t going to be worth it to see the look on my father’s face when I told him if he wanted to go toe to toe with the Remington County Historical Association, that was on him. I wouldn’t be stepping in to talk with Marilyn Martin or anyone else on his behalf. In fact, if the conversation went the way I was planning it to, I’d be lucky enough to withstand his wrath, and when he saw I was immovable in my stance, he’d cut me out completely.

Only difference was, I was now beyond caring. I didn’t need him or his influence to define me any longer.

When he wasn’t away on business, my father lived in a luxury condo on the dune-lined shores of Lake Michigan. It wasn’t long after my mother left for good that he’d transferred ownership of the King estate to his sister. We grew up in that house and endured the occasional visit from my father while Bug and the paid staff raised us the best they could.

When my father’s Porsche wasn’t parked outside his building, I headed down the winding roads toward the King estate. It was common for my father to be gone on business for long stretches of time, lining pockets with generous donations to seemingly charitable organizations. Organizations he undoubtedly had a hand in and received plenty of kickbacks in the form of tax breaks or favors he could carry in his pocket.

Wherever he was, Aunt Bug seemed to be able to keep tabs on him, and I had a lifetime of issues to unload on him.

My family estate loomed large on the horizon as I pulled my car onto the long, winding driveway. The grand mansion, a testament to the King family’s wealth and pride, seemed to glare down at me with the same haughtiness my father often did. As I parked, I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the confrontation I had postponed for far too long.

The ornate oak front door creaked as it opened, its hinges complaining against the weight of time and echoing through the silence of the house. The air inside was thick with the scent of polished wood and old money. I glanced around and knew the house remembered every argument, every broken plate thrown against the wall in anger, every unfulfilled promise.

Heading toward the study, I braced myself for the clash with my father, where I expected to find him drowning his arrogance in a glass of whiskey. The heavy oak door swung open, revealing a room cloaked in shadows. A figure hunched behind the mahogany desk, cigar smoke stale in the air. The tension in the room heightened as I prepared to speak, but the figure remained silent.

As I stood there, ready to unleash the words I had rehearsed for years, the figure rose, making me stop in surprise. In the dim light, Aunt Bug’s face emerged, her usually composed demeanor replaced with an air of anxiety.

Aunt Bug jolted when she saw me. “Whip,” she stammered, her voice trembling like autumn leaves in the coastal wind. She laughed and placed a hand over her chest. “You scared me.”

I took a step forward, sensing that something was off about her. “What’s going on, Bug? Are you all right?”

She flicked a strand of silver hair from her face and laughed again. “Of course I’m all right. You startled me, that’s all.”

“I was looking for Dad. Have you seen him?”

Her eyes ticked toward the door at my back, as if she were afraid of prying ears in her own home. “Work took him into the city. He should be back in town in a few days.”

My lips formed a hard line. I’d wanted to confront my father, but his unsurprising absence took the wind from my sails. I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled, letting my shoulders sag.

When I opened my eyes, Bug was wringing her hands. I searched her eyes. “What’s going on?”

After a beat, she gestured with her chin. “I found something in the basement, something I think you should see. Follow me.”

Descending the staircase at the back of the house, the polished wood groaned beneath our footsteps. The air in the lower levels was damp and musty, filled with the scent of long-forgotten memories. Bug led me to a dim corner, where an old, dusty box sat neglected.

She opened it tentatively, revealing a mix of mementos—faded photographs, a well-worn denim jacket, and a haphazard stack of papers. Among the stack of papers were official documents that turned my curiosity into a knot of anxiety.

“Bug, what is all this?” I asked, my gaze fixed on the official-looking papers.

Bug hesitated, her eyes avoiding mine. “I was looking for old baby pictures to bring to Sylvie when I came across this box. I didn’t know what was inside, so I opened it and found all of this.”

I reached in and picked up a small plastic rectangle and turned it over. She would have been in her early sixties now, but smiling back at me was my mother frozen in time—light-brown eyes sparkling, her blonde hair styled in loose waves. The resemblance to my sister Sylvie was striking and a sucker punch. She was exactly how I had remembered her before she was gone.

I was seven when my mother left. Old enough to remember that she would hum and tickle my back to help me fall asleep, but young enough to not recall the actual tune. My mother’s name—Maryann—became a curse word, and we had each learned early on that the punishments for lamenting her absence were swift and harsh. My father never wanted children, but I assumed we became a way to keep my mother content. Eventually that wasn’t enough, and she left us all behind with the man who never wanted us in the first place.

My heart quickened. The room seemed to close in around me as I processed the possible implications of her driver’s license being in a box in a basement all this time. Long since expired. “Why would she leave these behind? And why are you just finding them now?”

“I don’t know, Whip.” Bug shook her head, a mix of confusion and fear in her eyes. “I—I just don’t know.”

I pulled out the denim jacket and clutched it in my fist. “Is this hers?”

Bug only offered a sharp nod.

I flipped the driver’s license back into the box and stuffed the jacket on top before closing the cardboard flaps. “It doesn’t matter,” I said despite the growing sense of dread clawing at me.

I stood, and Bug bent for the box and shoved it into me. “Take it. I don’t want this in my house.” My aunt cleared her throat and dusted off her shirt. “I have a luncheon to go to—planning a carnival takes work, and I don’t want to be late.”

With her shoulders set and chin raised, Bug dared me to defy her.

Just like a King to sweep something under the rug.

Leaving the dim basement, unanswered questions hung in the air like shadows, and the weight of my family’s secrets pressed down on me, leaving me with an unsettling certainty that things were not entirely as they seemed. Bug knew something, and she was either too afraid or too loyal to my father to say anything. I just wasn’t sure which.

I turned to my aunt as we walked toward the front door. “I’ll text him and let him know I’m looking to talk.”

Bug shook her head and let out a soft sigh. “A child’s shoulders were never meant to bear the weight of his father’s choices. But you know your father. If it’s not on his terms, it won’t happen at all.”

I bit back the comment that maybe we’d all been bending to his will for too long. I knew it wasn’t Bug’s fault that she’d gotten caught up in my father’s business dealings—leaving would have meant abandoning us in the same way our mother had.

The cardboard box was heavy in my hands. I nodded goodbye to my aunt and tossed it in the cab of my truck. An unsettling ache curdled my stomach as I gave the box one last sidelong glance. Something about knowing my mother’s possessions were there, sitting in a forgotten box right next to me, made her more real than she’d ever been.

My thoughts rambled back to Emily, and I closed my eyes and laid my head against the seat of my truck. She had swept into Outtatowner with her perfect smile.

Perfect family.

Perfect life.

All I had was a family name and with it a box of tangled, thorny secrets that refused to stay buried.