Chapter 251 – Age Gap Romance Free: Ward Sisters Series Free Online by Karla Sorensen

“What happened?”

Claire glanced over at her sisters while they packed up their stuff in the kitchen. The dining room table was covered in wedding paraphernalia, as was my office, and the family room. “She was working on the head table centerpiece with Molly,” she said quietly. “And Lia and I started laughing because one of the leaf stems looked like a snake.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. Paige had been working herself to the bone to make sure Claire’s wedding was perfect, but nothing about it had made her break down yet. Seemed unlikely that my wife—one of the strongest women I’d ever met—would be undone by a single centerpiece.

“Then Isabel brought up that one time we put a snake in your shower, right after you guys got married.” She grinned, and I caught a glimpse of the little hellion she used to be, right alongside Lia. “Remember that?”

I exhaled a laugh. “Yeah. I remember. I’m pretty sure the neighbors heard Paige scream when she found that one.”

Claire’s face smoothed out in a thoughtful facial expression. “Something about my wedding—it being the last one of the four of us—it’s triggering something for Paige. A sense of loss she didn’t have with the others, I think.”

“Have I mentioned how helpful it is that you’re a counselor?”

“For kids,” she said on a laugh. “But yes, you have.”

I smoothed my hands along the tops of my thighs. “Tell me what to do, Counselor Claire?”

“Just … give her a hug and tell her it will be okay. She’s allowed to feel what she’s feeling and she shouldn’t beat herself up over it. Life transitions don’t always trigger the emotions we expect them to, and my educated guess is that Paige is feeling a little embarrassed that she’s struggling with it.”

I turned to the side and studied her face. “You’re going to be a great mom, you know that? I may have to call you for advice more often.”

Claire, to my surprise, teared up, sliding her hand over mine. “Where do you think I learned how to be a great parent?”

I blew out a slow breath and tried to blink back the burning sensation pressing at the back of my eyes. “You four made it easy,” I said in a gruff voice.

She flung her arms around my shoulders and I heard a quiet sniff. Wrapping my arms around my little sister, I glanced over at the kitchen to see the other three watching us with soft smiles and bright, glassy eyes. I cleared my throat, because any longer and the whole house would be a giant weeping mess and I still had a redheaded wife to track down.

Claire wiped at her face as she stood. “Love you, big brother.”

I ruffled the top of her dark hair, like I used to when she was younger. “Love you too.”

With their stuff collected, and our collective emotions under control I stood at the front door and watched my four younger sisters walk out to their cars lining the street in front of the house. As they drove off, I felt just a little pinch of that loss that Claire mentioned.

The house was silent when I closed the door. With the four girls and their growing families often over for meals, and our son, Emmett, tiptoeing into the teenage years, a quiet house was something Paige and I didn’t experience very often.

I called her name and listened for a response, frowning slightly when I didn’t get one. My office was empty, as was our home gym. She wasn’t in the backyard, already set up for the intimate ceremony that would take place on Friday evening. There were fairy lights strung from the house, anchored in the center of the massive tree in our backyard, swooping in a graceful arch over the place where Claire and Bauer would say their vows. I’d caught Paige staring at it the last few days, making sure everything was exactly the way it should be.

As I climbed the stairs, I called her name again, but heard nothing. Our son, Emmett, was at a friend’s house, so I gave a cursory look into his bedroom, but she wasn’t there either. When I reached our bedroom, and found it dark and quiet, I felt my first tug of worry. It wasn’t like Paige to hide from me when she was upset. In the decade plus that we’d been married, I knew every facet of my wife’s personality.

Her anger when someone she loved was mistreated, which is what made her the very best mother in the entire world. Her humor, when the situation demanded it. Her ability to look at every situation from a perspective so uniquely Paige that no one else could quite master her advice-giving for the girls and Emmett. Not even me.

But emotions like this, the kind that would have her hiding her face, I wasn’t sure when I’d ever seen it. As I stood in the hallway, I glanced at the door to the room that used to be the twins’. And I heard a small, pitiful little sniffling sound.

My mouth curved in a wry grin as I pushed the door open. It was set up as a makeshift office/guest room. When Lia let little Gabriel sleep over, we had a Pack ‘n Play in the corner next to the wall, and a small stack of bins with the kids toys she’d started buying in the couple years since he’d been born. The closet door was open, and her legs were stretched out on the floor, protruding from the dark space.

I tugged my Wolves hat off and ran a hand over my hair. “Care for some company?” I asked quietly.

One of her feet slid backwards, followed by the other, until only the tips of her pink and white sneakers were visible. “Sure.”

When I edged around the foot of the bed, I finally saw my wife’s face, and even after so many years, it never failed to make my heart race. The most beautiful woman in the world, with the biggest heart, and she was mine.

Her arms were wrapped around her shins, chin resting on her knees, and her big blue eyes were red-rimmed from whatever big feelings she’d let out in that little closet. “I don’t know if there’s room for you, though. You’re really big.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

Paige’s lips curved up in a smile.

“Stay there,” I told her, when she went to move. I slid to the ground, bracing my back against the side of the bed and stretched my legs out, motioning for her to give me her feet. Paige stretched her long legs out, and I carefully removed her sneakers, setting them next to me on the floor. When I dug my thumbs in the arches of her feet, she groaned. “Why you hiding in here, wife?”

She didn’t answer. “Did the girls leave?”

I nodded, keeping my attention on her feet while I gave her the same massage I used to when she was pregnant with Emmett. After working on the balls of her feet, and the arches, I smoothed my hands around the fine bones in her ankles, moving to the other foot.

“I didn’t mean to hide from everyone.”

My eyes glanced up to hers. They were clearer now. “Wanna talk about it?”

She let out a tremulous breath. “It’s the last one, you know? The last wedding. When the twins started talking about that fucking snake, and the pranks they played on me when I first moved in …” Her voice trailed off. “And then all I could think about was how fast time went. They were so little when I met them, and now they’re all married and having babies and they’re so smart and kind and amazing and they’re gonna be too busy to see us anymore and Emmett is basically an adult, and he’s going to leave us soon, too—“

My chuckle broke into her tirade, and when she narrowed her eyes dangerously, I did it right back. “Emmett just turned twelve, Paige. We’ve got a few years before he abandons us.”

“I suppose,” she answered quietly. “And I know they won’t get too busy to see us. They’re still here all the time. But … they were my first babies, you know? I love them so much that sometimes I don’t know whether to cry or laugh or puke.”

“Puke?” I asked with a smile.

Paige nodded. “If someone I didn’t know said that, I’d probably want to gag. How obnoxious, right?”

Her voice wobbled, and I watched helplessly while a tear spilled down her cheek.

“I know what you mean. Claire made me cry downstairs too.”

Paige emitted a watery laugh. “Did she?”

I nodded. “I told her she was going to be a great mom someday, and she told me that she learned to be a great parent from me.”

My wife shifted out of the closet, and when she settled herself onto my lap, I slid my arms up her back. Her red hair tangled in my fingers and she cupped my face in her cool hands. “You are the best fucking dad in the entire world, Logan Ward,” she whispered. “It’s so hot, I can’t even stand it.”

I laughed.

She leaned forward and pressed a butterfly-soft kiss on my lips. The top, and then the bottom. I closed my eyes and breathed her in.

Paige wrapped her arms around my neck and tucked herself against my body. Where I held her tightly, her rib cage expanded on a deep breath.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. I just needed you, I think.”

I smoothed my hand in soothing circles on her back, let the peace of the moment settle like a warm blanket. Then she told me about what they’d worked on. What was left to do. How beautiful Claire would look in her dress—I’d heard the phrase “garden princess” about seventeen times since she bought the thing and I still wasn’t sure what that meant, but apparently it was good. Something with “deep Vs” and “romantic lace sleeves,” and every time they described it to me, I nodded dutifully even though most wedding dresses looked alike for me.

All I knew was that every penny spent on those dresses, those four weddings, was damn near the proudest I’d ever been to shell out a shit-ton of money for a single-day event in my life. I would give them anything I had, a thousand times over.

“I think I’m gonna sleep for a week when this wedding is over,” she said, nuzzling her face into my neck and breathing deeply.

The thought of a bed and Paige and a stretch of uninterrupted days, it had me closing my eyes. Some guys wanted a beach vacation. Maybe mountains to hike, or big, historic cities to see. I just wanted rest. And her. That’s how it had always been with us though. It didn’t matter where we went, what life morphed into, as long as we had each other.

“Think Emmett can fend for himself if I joined you?”

Her fingers played with the collar of my shirt. “Sure. He’s resourceful.”

“Can you imagine what he’d feed himself for an entire week on his own?”

She laughed. “Cheese quesadillas and waffles.”

My hands pushed up underneath the hem of her shirt so I could feel her skin underneath my fingers. Paige was so soft. She kissed the edge of my jaw, and I breathed in the sweet scent of her shampoo.

We sat like that for a few quiet minutes, and when she pulled back, her lips were curved in a mischievous smile.

“What?” I asked.

She touched her thumb to the middle of my mouth, and I pressed a kiss to it. “We’re alone,” she said.

“We are.”

Her eyes traced over my face. “Like, really actually alone. All night.”

Heat licked down my spine, because that almost never happened. The way my hands had been moving on her back changed. No longer soothing, I pressed harder along the curve of her spine, down below her hips and up the side of her waist where I could feet the weight of her breasts. “We are,” I repeated. “What do you want to do about it, wife?”

She bit her lip, curling her hands into the hem of her shirt and tugging it over her head. Her fiery tangle of hair settled over her shoulders, and I leaned forward to press a kiss to the top curve of her breasts where the simple black satin of her bra pushed them higher.

Her fingers dragged over the plane of my chest, curling over my shoulders and biceps.

“I’d like to start right here,” she said matter-of-factly.

I hummed, tugging a bra cup down and sucking one of her nipples into my mouth with a hard pull of my cheeks. She gasped, clutching the back of my head.

“Then where,” I said against her skin, licking a path to the other side of her chest. Her hand was between us, frantically shoving at the waistband of my gym shorts. “Tell me what you want.”

“Oh,” she moaned, curling her hand around me while I scrambled to push my hands into the openings of her shorts. “I— Oh shit, like I can think when you”—she gasped when I curled my fingers—“when you do that.”

When my fingers found her ready and waiting, I swore under my breath. Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic way to woo my wife, shoving the bare minimum of our clothes out of the way so we could do it on the guest room floor, but even after all those years, Paige still had the power to turn me into an impatient, greedy brute.

The day before, she woke me by sliding her hand underneath the blankets, and we managed to sneak a quiet round in, me moving slow and steady between her legs while Emmett slept. But this … this was a gift we hardly ever got.

Alone.

All night.

No young ears or grandkids sleeping down the hall.

Were my hands shaking? Maybe a little.

And we started … right there … just like that. My shorts hardly pushed past my ass, hers shoved to the side with my greedy hands, and my wife rode me until my eyes rolled back in my head. With my hands wrapped tight onto her writhing hips, she clenched around me with a crying moan.

Paige slumped against me, laughing breathlessly. She moved her hips in a slow circle, and I hissed out a slow breath. When I did, she raised her head, eyes wide in her face.

“You didn’t …” Her voice trailed off.

Surging forward, I took her mouth in a ravenous kiss, sucking her tongue into my mouth and pushing my hands under the hem of her shorts so I could feel the warm flesh of her ass.

She laughed at my bruising grip.

“We’re moving to the shower,” I told her.

“Oh?” She dropped her head back, and I licked up the side of her neck.

“Yeah. I love how your hair looks when it’s wet,” I whispered. “It’s easier to grab on to when it falls down your back.”

She swore.

“Then bathroom counter.” I sucked on her earlobe. “Because the height is perfect and I never, ever get to anymore.”

She whimpered.

“Then,” I whispered into her ear, “we’re going to bed. And I’m going to finish our night with my head between your thighs, because it’s my favorite place in the world.”

When I pulled back, Paige’s expression was dazed, delirious.

She gripped my face and took my mouth in a helpless, passionate kiss. Our tongues tangled wet and sloppy, and I bit her bottom lip.

“All of them?” she moaned. “It sounds delightful.”

With my thumb and forefinger, I took her chin and made sure she was looking straight at me. “All of them. Because I’m not done with you yet, Paige Ward,” I growled against her mouth.

She curled a hand around the back of my neck, resting her forehead to mine. “You better not ever be done with me,” she said.

“Never,” I vowed. “Not for as long as I live.”

The End

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