Han’s cock immediately responded to what had by now become a well-established rule for what should happen before she accepted an order to take him in her mouth.
And just like that, they were back. The first night of their necessary retreat from the outside world was spent consummating her room.
He took her mouth while she kneeled on her floor, her pussy while she braced against her wall, and finally the hole between her gorgeous ass cheeks—though he hadn’t lasted long in that tight space.
Fortunately for his pride, he recovered when they returned to his room and took a shower together.
Then again, when he finally laid her down on her back for some simple missionary. He kissed her slow while moving deep inside of her, showing her how he felt in this way since he never seemed to be able to come up with the right words.
Their last few arguments had blown them into their separate corners, where they both recovered. But this storm, they would weather together.
Warm sunshine filled Han’s chest as he began to drift off to sleep with his wife in his arms.
But then she said, “I’ll sell my Jeep.”
“What?”
“I’ll sell my Jeep to get the rest of the money. That way, we can both get what we want.”
And just like that, the knot returned, along with that image of Victor collapsed and drunk in his shower.
Just a few more weeks. But how would he handle it when she was truly gone?
31
JAZZ
No more fighting after that. Victor managed to get Dawn back. But Han and I sheltered in place while the guys combed the island, looking for K Diamond and Yaron.
I also posted my Jeep on several different private sale sites. No real offers came in, but I held out hope. I figured the locals who were most likely to want a 20-year-old Wrangler was probably more concerned with holiday presents. Speaking of which…
I convinced Han to stick to a $50 cap for Christmas gifts that year, and he said yes—as long as I agreed to wear one of the cut-off shirts he’d made me when we unwrapped presents.
“I’ll admit I went over,” he said on Christmas morning—his version, so technically Christmas afternoon.
It was hard to grouse, though when I saw what he got me…a gorgeous hardcover edition of The Summer Fae by Clara Quinn, the sci-fi fantasy writer who’d made a Hawaiian teenager fall in love with all things Fae back in high school.
It was the perfect gift from my Fae King.
“Thanks,” I said, my heart melting. Then I admitted, “I kind of went over too.”
I handed him a card, and his face lit up with surprise when he opened it. “You wrote out your message in Chinese.”
“I mean, Chen wrote it out,” I admitted. “I just made sure to keep my handwriting as neat as possible when I was copying what he texted me down on the card.”
“To my favorite sprite king,” he read out loud, translating what I wrote into English.
“Yeah, there was some back and forth about how to write fae in Chinese,” I explained with a wince.
“Yes, I imagine.” He threw me a teasing look but softened his gaze to tell me, “Thank you for this.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. There’s more!” I tapped on the rectangular piece of paper tucked inside the card.
“What is this?” he asked, holding up the homemade voucher with “AS MANY AS IT TAKES” written across it.
“After I buy myself back, I want to give you more surfing lessons whenever you’re in Hawaii,” I explained. “As many as it takes for you to get really good.
I’d thought this would make him a little happy. I mean, I was basically telling him I’d still be willing to see him after our divorce.
But he lowered the envelope, looking liked I’d backhanded him out of the blue.
“Is it really so terrible?” he asked, his voice dipping low and angry. “Is it really so terrible being married to me?”
I blinked, then understood something I hadn’t before Phantom shared the rest of Han’s backstory with me. Han wasn’t just insulted about me not wanting to stay married to him because of his ego. He was genuinely hurt. Triggered by the mother, who opted out of keeping him as a kid.
That was what this forced marriage was really about. Keeping me. Keeping me like he couldn’t keep his mother.
My heart flooded with empathy. But then I had to recognize to myself, if not to Han, that abandonment issues from the past wasn’t any kind of foundation for a current marriage.
“I…I don’t know how to explain this to you in a way you’d understand.”
I expelled a breath, feeling much like Phantom the day he came to my room to plead Han’s case. “My parents aren’t like yours. Not like you and me. My father didn’t buy my mother or save her from some terrible fate. He met her here, fell in love with her—just because she was awesome and didn’t put up with any of his bullshit. It only took four months for him to fly with her all the way to the Philippines to ask her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. My mother cried happy tears the day they got married—I mean, you should see the videos and pictures. Everybody was laughing and having a good time. And you know what? Their marriage was great after that. They were happy and loving—and yeah, Dad was super strict, and Mom’s developed a horrible addiction to flower prints—seriously, we might have to stage an intervention. But Mika and I knew how much they loved us growing up….”
