Paradise Found: Cain (Paradise #2)(46)

“Do you think they believed us?” I questioned, as Sofie slumped against her door after closing it with a heavy huff. I fell onto her bed.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Shit, that was hard,” I sighed, looking up at her ceiling. “It’s going to be okay, right?” I questioned. Her response was climbing over the top of me, straddling me, before her mouth came to mine.




I woke to a tender kiss on my neck and turned to pull her to me.

“I need to get up,” she stressed. “Wedding brunch.”

Recalling how we told her grandparents about our marriage, I sat upright instantly. Sofie giggled. I swear it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. The innocence of it, mixed with her teasing, made my heart skip. I turned to claim her mouth as punishment for laughing.

“The wedding party that was here, not ours,” she clarified after one hard kiss. Her voice grew quiet and I skimmed the expression on her face. She looked away from me, and I used a thick finger to move her cheek so she’d return to me.

“We can have a wedding brunch, if you wish. We can do a honeymoon in Italy. We can have a real wedding. Whatever you’d like, Sofie,” I said in seriousness. I didn’t want her to feel incomplete with how things happened.

She smiled slowly at me, and in typical Sofie fashion, everything seemed okay. We would get to all those things, but she seemed content just knowing the plan was to make them happen someday.

She kissed me quickly, reminding me she needed to work.

“You know what’s mine is yours. I can take care of you. You don’t need to keep working here.”

“I like working here,” she replied crawling out from under me. “This is my family.”

“I’m your family,” I reminded her, and she smiled that tender smile once again.

I was allowed to fall back asleep, take a long run, then collect my wife for another afternoon by the stream. We needed to leave in the morning, in order for her to make her Monday class. I’d had Kursch drive me to the inn, knowing I wasn’t leaving without her. We would be driving home together.

I called Kursch.

“You missed a fight,” he stated. That was true. Saturday night, as I made love to Sofie under the stars, I’d missed an exhibition fight. The uncontained wrath of my father would be ruthless. I hadn’t had my phone on all weekend. Opening the messages, I had seventy-seven texts from my father, each one growing in frustration and fury. I didn’t read further than the first five to get the gist of his feelings on my failure. I’d known his reaction before I clicked on the phone. I’d never skipped a fight, but I never had to fight to keep my wife either. Getting Sophie back was more important to me.

“How mad is he?” I asked Kursch, but I knew the answer. Atom Callahan was going to be madder than mad. Lightning bolts and thunder were going to be tame, compared to what I expected as his reaction. I might be twenty-four, but I was the breadwinner of my family. I had responsibilities, he would tell me. I needed to keep fighting.

“It’s not going to be pretty,” Kursch warned. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

Kursch would temper the fury of my father. He had been his friend for as long as I could remember, and longer. He was there when my parents married, and he was there when my mother was kicked out. He had been a faithful servant to both of us, in different manners. I didn’t know his past. He had only been present and future to me.

“I’m going home,” I stated. “I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t push him, Cain. You and I both know this. Be careful,” he warned.

My father wouldn’t physically hurt me. He couldn’t any longer. His blows ended the day I fought back. That was the day he claimed I was a man. He’d kept most of my money frozen from me, and that hadn’t hurt me either, until I wanted to purchase my home in California. I’d needed the year to collect the funds, separately from my budget, in order to attain it. There was only one way my father could damage me, and I wasn’t letting him anywhere near Sofie.

We had an hour drive back to Preston, but I wanted to make a stop first. We left in the pre-dawn hours, which Sofie’s grandparents knew was in order to get her back to school in time for class. I promised her she could sleep in the car, but I couldn’t skip out on a special stop.

When we pulled into the diner parking lot, Sofie’s eyes opened softly.

“Why are we here?” she sleepily asked.

“I want to show you something.”

Holding her hand, I led her through the dark dawn, climbing the steep trail to the turret outlook. It was one of my favorite places, and I wanted to share an experience with her. I was nervous. The last time we’d been here didn’t end exactly how I planned. I hoped to rectify that presently. As we stood before the curved cement barrier, I wrapped the blanket I’d taken from the inn around us. I asked Sofie to hold it then brace her hands on the cool stone before her. My hands made quick work to slip down her yoga pants to which she gently protested.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but then my fingers hit slick folds, and my mouth warmed her neck. She rocked into me as I prepped her for what was to come next.

“Remember our first wedding night?” I muttered, as I formed a haphazard trail of kisses over her neck.

“Yes,” she sighed. We’d made love slowly, sweetly, like we had last night. Then we did it my way. Hard.