DUPLICITY
(Completely unrelated to book #1)
Release TBA
THE VAULT
Sexy, fun stand-alone novellas showcasing the hot and steamy side of Aleatha.
UNCONVENTIONAL
(January 2018)
(Originally appeared in THE VAULT anthology) UNEXPECTED
(Coming August of 2018)
All: A Grip & Bris Story
Kennedy Ryan
Dear Reader:
If you have not read the GRIP Series—FLOW, GRIP & STILL—this story contains spoilers.
* * *
Please consider starting the series for FREE with FLOW.
Grip, a prominent musician and social activist, and his manager-wife Bristol, navigate the life that's all they ever wanted, and more than they bargained for.
Copyright ? 2018 by Kennedy Ryan All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
One
Grip
I hate waking up to an empty bed.
Scratch that.
I hate waking up without my wife. I draw that distinction because there was a time when I loved stretching from one corner of a California king to the other. After growing up in tiny, cramped spaces—which were sometimes shared with various family members, depending on their “situation” at the time—when I had my own space, my own bed, I luxuriated in it. But it only took sleeping with Bristol once to make any bed she’s not in feel just . . . empty.
It isn’t even light outside yet. Shadows cloak our bedroom. I press the little light on the cheap ass watch Bristol won for me so many years ago. This thing has been to the shop a lot, but it’s still ticking enough to show me it’s four in the morning. I’ve only been asleep two hours after a long night at the studio.
With the drapes drawn, barely a sliver of moonlight penetrates the darkness. I caress the rumpled, still-warm spot where Bristol should be and stare up at the ceiling. What my eyes can’t see, my memory paints on the dark canvas overhead. A Ferris wheel with us at the top sharing our first kiss, Bristol’s short, sweet breaths and urgent hands intoxicating me. I see Bristol, gorgeous against a backdrop of scarlet sand in the Dubai desert. Bristol under a night sky spilling snowflakes like secrets, and me on my knees, asking her—shit, begging her—to marry me. I see her standing in a mountaintop chapel with majestic, white-capped peaks outdone by the devotion shining from her eyes as I lay my heart at her feet, verse by verse in the vows I wrote for her. I see her weeping, broken, devastated on the hardest day of our lives. And I see her joy-lit face when she gave birth to our children
Our life together is panoramic, stretched wide in ugliness and pain, vast in love and passion. I wouldn’t trade one minute of it and I savor every day we have together. Not everyone gets to spend this life with their soul mate. Some walk all their days with half a heart, with the ache of something missing. I know what that feels like, and I hope to never feel it again.
Despite the exhaustion weighing me down, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, scrubbing a weary hand over my face. Not bothering to grab sweatpants, I walk from our bedroom and down the hall in my briefs. First stop is Nina’s room. Our little girl sleeps like a log. She zips all over this house with boundless energy, a two-year-old tornado, leaving a trail of toys, soiled clothes, and hair bows in her wake. Every night it’s a fight to get her to bed. Once she’s asleep, though, not a peep.
Her nightlight illuminates the plump curve of her cheeks and the soft cloud of dark, curly hair fanned out on her pillow. I draw a sharp breath through the emotion tightening my chest. What I had with Bristol was all-encompassing before, but having Nina added another dimension to our love, to our lives, that I couldn’t have conceived before my daughter. Words are my creative currency, but this feeling defies words, goes beyond the scope of what I can articulate. It didn’t exist until this little girl did. It was born with her. Family has always been important to me, but this is another level. The people under this roof are my whole world. Not the Grammys or the fame or the money—none of it counts for shit without them.
I’m still smiling about my daughter’s out-like-a-light state when I pad down the hall to find Bristol. She’s in the nursery feeding our five-month-old son Martin. I hope I never get used to this, to the way my heart contracts when I see her breastfeeding. Or cooking dinner. Doing Nina’s hair. Brushing her teeth. Putting on makeup. Practicing yoga poses. Bristol doesn’t have to be doing anything monumental to make my heart stop. Just the fact that she’s in my life, the center of my world, makes me count my blessings.
She looks up from her seat in the glider and smiles at me as I lean one shoulder against the doorframe.
“Hi,” she says, her voice and eyes warm and soft. I smile back but don’t speak. I just take her in. She recently cut her hair to just above her shoulders, and it halos around her face in dark waves and coppery streaks. Martin has fallen asleep at her breast, idly suckling every few seconds even though he isn’t awake to enjoy it.
But I’m enjoying it.
Bris wore one of my shirts to bed, which she does on purpose because she knows how damn sexy I think it is. The buttons open to her navel, and one panel of the shirt covers her left side, but the other falls away to bare her right shoulder and breast where Martin’s lucky little mouth wraps around a nipple.
“Hi,” I finally reply, my voice a little hoarse and my dick stiff in my briefs.
“I tried to stay awake,” she whispers. “But I was too tired. How’d the recording session go?”
“Not great.” I push out a frustrated breath. “Everything feels forced.”
I walk deeper into the room until I reach them, bending to take Martin from her, careful not to wake him. Her nipple, distended, shiny and wet, pops from his mouth. I lean down to her ear, sucking the lobe between my lips.
“Grip.” Bristol’s breath stutters and her eyes drift closed.
Holding Martin to my chest, I trail kisses over her jaw and down to her collarbone.
“Go wait for me,” I say, my voice low and lust-rough. “I got him.”
She stands and quickly leaves the room while I lay my son in his crib.
He squirms and twists as soon as his little body hits the mattress.
“Missed you today, handsome boy,” I say softly, pushing thick curls off his round face.
His eyes, dark like mine where Nina’s are gray like Bristol’s, snap open. I catch a curse, hoping he goes right back to sleep so I can go fuck his mother. Our gazes lock in the lamplight for a few seconds before his long lashes flutter, his head lolls to the side, and he falls back asleep.
Who would believe such a little person would require so much work? So much vigilance? Bristol is back in the office for half days, but the rest of the time she’s here with Nina and Martin. I’m here when I can be, and a nanny, whom Bristol vetted like the FBI, helps for a few hours a week. Sarah, Bristol’s assistant, is at our house all the time working. Bris is constantly in Zoom meetings and on teleconference calls. She works harder than ever.
I help, of course, but I’m preparing for the next album and a tour. I’ve been more absent than I like to be. On the surface, everything is working, but there’s a restlessness I’ve been trying to ignore so I can go through the motions of managing this complicated life of ours. I miss my time with Bris. I need more of her. If I sound like a whiny, needy wuss, I don’t really care. If there is one thing I’m in tune with, it’s my most base needs. And there is nothing more essential, more fundamental to my happiness, than my wife.