THE BABY OATH

by Sophia Gray

  His tongue went dry in his mouth, feeling like sandpaper as he tried to clear his throat and get a handle on the dirty, awful thoughts flittering through his brain. He knew it was sick, but god damn it, her ass just looked so plump and juicy, the outline of her breasts so enticing, her legs so lithe. He kept replaying the images over and over and over again, picking up on new details to salivate over. Jesus, he felt like such a creepy loser, getting hard after walking in on a girl in the shower. Was he twelve?

  He clamped his eyes shut and tried to focus on the blackness of his own mind, clearing out all thoughts that were getting between him and sleep. But no matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t get his dick to go soft. His heart was pulsing in his cock, which pressed against the fabric of his jeans as if it was trying to escape.

  Cal blew out his breath and frustration and wiggled out of his jeans, hoping that the cold air of the room around him would do the trick. But no dice. His hard-on was determined, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

  He reached down and stuck his hand in his boxers, wrapping a loose fist around his erection and pumping it a few times just to give himself some relief from the heavy ache in his balls. The next second, he heard a door slam shut and footsteps go down the hallway. Every muscle in Cal’s body tensed up as he strained his ears, listening for a sign of what Antonia might be doing. Did she notice he’d used the toilet? Did she know it was him? Was she coming here right now to call him out?

  For some reason, that last thought made his dick twitch a little bit in his hands, a tiny drop of pre-ejaculate dripping over the side of his cock and landing on one of his fingers as he squeezed himself a little tighter. He let his eyes roll into the back of his head and moved his hand in long, drawn-out motions while his mind went wild with images.

  “Dreaming about me, are you?” Antonia’s voice echoed in his head. He imagined that she was standing there at the edge of his bed, maybe dressed in a sexy negligee or in a bra and panties, her cleavage practically leaping out of her clothes while she moved her hips from side to side. God damn it, she’s so fucking hot, Cal thought, swallowing hard as he reminded himself that Antonia wasn’t really there. This was all in his head. But by fuck it was too tempting to ignore, even if it wasn’t real.

  “You’re a bad boy, Mr. Amos,” his imagined version of Antonia crooned lightly, climbing up onto the bed next to him and throwing a slim leg over one of his. “I saw what you did.”

  “You saw me staring at you?” Cal whispered out loud to himself, sweat beginning to bead at the base of his neck as he moved his hand faster over his cock. He shut his eyes tight as he pictured Antonia smiling mischievously at him.

  “Of course,” the imaginary Antonia said in his head. “I was shocked, really. Nobody’s ever walked in on me like that before. But…”

  “But?” Cal prompted her, even though he already knew what he wanted her to say.

  “I didn’t stop you,” Antonia whispered. “I wanted it. I want it so bad.”

  Cal imagined that Antonia would then slide her hand under his shirt, maybe play with his nipples a little bit, just to tease him and get him even harder than he already was. Then, she’d push her hand down into his boxers, pull his own hand off his dick so she could take over. Her fingers would be long and warm, Cal imagined, her skin impossibly soft to the touch. She would stroke him teasingly at first, making his skin tingle with an almost tickling sensation. His hips jerked up in the air, further into his own fist as tried to listen even harder, hearing the distant sound of a floorboard squeak under Antonia’s foot somewhere at the other end of the hall, where she’d presumably chosen one of the smaller bedrooms to live in.

  “You’re so bad,” Cal’s vision of Antonia whispered into his ear, making his hairs stand up on edge, prickling with overwhelming sensation as he imagined Antonia leaning down to take him into her mouth. God, it’d be so sweet to fuck that mouth, to force himself down her throat, to have her smile up at him with just her beautiful twinkling eyes, to utterly lose control inside her body. Cal moved his fist faster over his cock, using his own pre-ejaculate as lubrication as he went harder and harder, fucking his hips up into his hand and down onto the mattress, until his bed was squeaking a little bit and he pictured himself coming on Antonia’s bright pink tongue.

  “Fuck!” he cried out, a little too loudly, just as he exploded over his own hand. Shit. He should have prepared better and gotten some tissues ahead of time so he wouldn’t have to deal with this mess. But, oh well. It was a hell of an orgasm, maybe his best one ever not involving the touch of another person.

  Carefully, so as not to soil his bed sheets, Cal got to his feet, reaching over to the bedside table for a box of tissues to clean up. Immediately afterwards, he fell back onto the bed, cradling the extra pillow he kept around just so he had something to hold onto.

  “I’m such an idiot,” he whispered to himself as soon as the lovely warmth of his orgasm fully receded from his body, leaving him feeling cold and alone. It was pathetic, jacking off to the nanny he barely knew and didn’t even really like that much. She was mouthy and honestly a little full of herself, preaching to him like she was superior when, really, she didn’t even have her own life together. What was there to like? Other than her sexy body, of course, which she’d managed to hide from him under unflattering clothing two days in a row. Somehow Cal felt disturbingly certain that this wouldn’t be the last time he pictured Antonia to get himself off. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other options. That was the annoying thing. There were plenty of girls who hung around the Bone Breakers clubhouse, hanging onto his every word, looking at him like he was the son of God himself, but none of them really caught his attention, even in a purely physical sense. Besides, between his job and the MC, he didn’t have the energy to devote to a woman. It was tempting for Cal to feel like this could be a convenient way for him to let off steam, using Antonia to get off without ever actually having sex with her, but his inner moral compass shouted that lustful part of himself down. You can’t just go around leering at your employee so you can get off on it later. It’s creepy and gross. You can’t do it ever again, he told himself.

  He needed to stop, right now. That much was obvious. He had to cut it off before it could grow into anything more than a passing fantasy. He couldn’t allow himself to think of his son’s nanny as a potential fuck toy. There was too much potential danger there, too many uncontrollable variables, for him to even think about it.

  Cal had just about convinced himself, for the time being anyway, that he was capable of looking at his nanny in a non-sexual light when he heard a sudden crashing noise from down the hall. He bolted upright in bed immediately, swinging his legs over the side and breaking into a run out into the hallway. “What’s wrong?” he half-shouted, flicking on the nearest light to reveal Bobby on the floor in the center of the hallway, holding his ankle. “What are you doing up?” Cal asked, slowly approaching his son and kneeling down to see if he was hurt.

  “I just—it’s nothing, nothing. Sorry,” Bobby said before staggering to his feet, beginning to limp towards the bathroom.

  “It doesn’t look like nothing,” Cal said, but he made no move to follow his small son, even though the little guy looked like he was in pain. He must have tripped over one of the side tables against the wall in the hallway, but what was he doing awake at this hour in the first place?

  “What’s going on?” Antonia asked, throwing the door of her bedroom open. She walked out into the hallway with a bathrobe on and a towel wrapped around her head.

  “I’m honestly not sure,” Cal said, inwardly commanding his heart to calm down. It had started pounding against his chest in response to Antonia’s appearance. He could see a significant stretch of skin underneath the bathrobe, revealing her long, firm-looking legs. How I’d love to reach out and touch those fucking legs, Cal thought before he cut himself off, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from Antonia’s lovely body.

  “Bobby? Honey?” Antonia said. She w
alked over to the bathroom and knelt down on the ground. Bobby had just closed the door and clicked the lock into place, but Cal couldn’t hear him peeing or doing anything else to suggest he was going to the bathroom. “Honey, are you okay? Talk to me,” Antonia said, looking up at Cal with wide, worried eyes. “Did he say anything to you?” she asked in a hushed tone of voice.

  Cal shook his head. “No, I asked him what he was doing up, but he didn’t say anything,” Cal whispered back.

  Antonia frowned and pulled the towel off of her head, letting her damp hair drop around her shoulders. She knocked lightly on the bathroom door again, calling out, “Bobby, sweetie. Are you sick? Do you need help, honey?”

  “No, thank you, I’m fine,” Bobby called out a moment later. But Cal could make out the sound of his breathing now, heavy and ragged.

  Antonia looked up at Cal again, her eyes flashing with concern. She mouthed up at Cal: “He’s crying.”

  Cal nodded slowly, walking up to the bathroom door and pressing his ear against the wood in the hopes of making out some of the noises more clearly. After a few seconds of listening, it became obvious that the little boy was crying, whining a little under his breath as he sniffled several times in quick succession. Cal backed away from the door after hearing a particularly sad choked-off sob, looking to Antonia helplessly.

  Antonia furrowed her brow. She rubbed at her wet hair with the towel before getting to her feet and then secured the bathrobe more tightly with the sash around her waist. “Okay, I got this,” she said softly, probably speaking more to herself than to Cal. “Honey? Bobby? I’m going to come in, okay?”

  “No, please! I—please don’t!” Bobby cried from the other side of the door, inhaling shakily, probably trying to stop himself from crying even harder.

  Antonia paused at the door, tapping her fingernails against the wood for a few seconds before speaking again. “Honey, I’m going to give you thirty seconds, okay, and then I’m going to come in and talk to you. All right?” She paused, waiting for Bobby to respond, but he didn’t say anything. After the allotted time passed, Antonia reached into her pocket, pulled out the keychain that Cal had given her that morning, immediately found the right key, and used it to open up the door.

  Cal moved to follow Antonia through the door, but she stopped him with a hand in the air. “Wait. I think I should go in alone,” Antonia said in a low volume.

  “Why?” Cal asked reflexively, but then when Antonia sighed and frowned, clearly reluctant to explain her reasoning, Cal just nodded. “Okay, okay, you can go in. I’ll just wait out here.”

  Antonia smiled sweetly. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll try to be quick about it.” She stepped through the door and shut it behind her before Cal could even get a look at Bobby.

  Cal knew he should have just gone to bed straight away. There was no way he could contribute or help the kid calm down. Cal was talented at many things, but coddling little children wasn’t one of them. Still, though, his curiosity got the better of him, and he pressed his ear back to the bathroom door, straining to discern what was being said inside the bathroom. Finally, he was able to ignore whatever extraneous background noise was distracting him and focus in on Antonia’s voice as she said, “Do you want to tell me what happened to upset you, sweetheart?”

  “N-nothing,” Bobby said before sniffling loudly.

  Antonia was quiet for a long moment, and Cal was a little worried that she was about to turn back around and leave Bobby alone in the bathroom, but eventually she broke the silence again, saying, “You know, sometimes I get sad, too.”

  “Why?” Bobby asked in a small, sad voice, so softly that Cal had to strain his ears hard to pick up on the word.

  “Lots of reasons,” Antonia said. “Mostly because people I love aren’t around me as often as I’d like. I used to be sad when I had to work in an office and leave Daniel to a babysitter. That was hard.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bobby said.

  Antonia laughed lightly. “No, no, it’s okay. Everything is fine now.”

  There was a pause where neither of them spoke, and then Bobby said in a barely audible tone, “I’m still sad, though.”

  “Why are you sad, honey?” Antonia asked.

  “I don’t know where Mommy is,” Bobby said, sniffling again like he was fighting back tears.

  “I know, honey. I know. That’s so hard. I wish you didn’t have to deal with that,” Antonia said.

  Bobby just continued to sniffle a little.

  “You know, you can cry if you want,” Antonia said. “I’m not going to make you cry if you don’t want to, but there’s nothing shameful about it. You can cry, sweetheart.”

  “Boys don’t cry,” Bobby said, his voice wobbling a little bit. “That’s what Mommy always said. I can’t cry.”

  “Can I let you in on a little secret?” Antonia said, dropping her voice a little bit so that Cal had to listen harder to make out what she was saying. “Everybody cries. Everybody. Anybody who’s said they’ve never cried is a liar.”

  “Really?” Bobby asked.

  “Really,” Antonia said confidently. “So don’t worry about it. You don’t have to run to your bathroom to cry. You can cry in front of me and your daddy if you want.”

  “He’s not my daddy,” Bobby replied stiffly.

  “Right. I’m sorry. Me and Mr. Amos. Cal. You should call him Cal if you want,” Antonia said. “You can cry in front of us if something is wrong, and we’ll try to help you feel better.”

  Bobby sniffled a few times, probably considering her suggestion for a long moment before he finally spoke again. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure,” Antonia said.

  “I have bad dreams. All the time,” Bobby said in a hushed whisper. “Mommy said to stop talking about it, so don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.”

  “What happens in your bad dreams?” Antonia asked.

  “I don’t—I don’t know,” Bobby replied. It was clear from the awkward, stilted way he spoke that he was lying, but Antonia didn’t push the issue.

  “Okay, honey. You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry about your dreams, though. You can always come to me if something scares you in the middle of the night. Do you know where my room is?”

  “Yes,” Bobby said in between sniffles.

  “All right. Well, I’ll leave you alone. You can always come to me, though. Remember that,” Antonia said. Cal immediately backed away from the bathroom door, not wanting either of them to realize he’d been listening in the whole time.

  Antonia stepped out the next minute, frowning deeply.

  “Well?” Cal asked, leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom door.

  Antonia grabbed him by the elbow and led him down the hall to an empty room, waiting until they were safely inside with the door closed before turning to him and hissing under her breath, “He’s having nightmares.”

  “And?” Cal asked, confused as to why Antonia’s tone seemed so urgent. Nightmares weren’t a big deal, right?

  “Well, I’m pretty sure his mom leaving him is really messing with his head,” Antonia said in a rough whisper. In the darkness of the empty bedroom, she was a shadow among other shadows, but if Cal squinted a little he could make out the fire in her eyes, the passion that seemed to simmer underneath her skin. “I don’t think he would have told me about the nightmares unless they were happening a lot, or unless they were really bad. I think it’s a problem, Mr. Amos.”

  Cal was a little weirded out by constantly being addressed by his last name. Even his patients called him by his first name. But he chose not to say anything about it. He would feel strange forcing Antonia to use his first name unless she felt comfortable doing so. “How do you know that it’s a recurring problem, though?” he asked. “He could just be complaining about one nightmare.”

  Cal saw Antonia shake her head in the darkness. “No, he’s not like that,” she argued.

  “How would you know?” Cal asked. “You only met hi
m yesterday.”

  He could tell even by Antonia’s long silence that he’d fucked up somehow by saying that, even though he’d only pointed out the truth. Antonia finally sighed and backed further away from him, turning around and walking to the bed in the center of the room to sit. “All right, well, I guess you can keep that in mind, but if you want my opinion, just speaking as a mother, I’d look into getting him some help.”

  “Help? Like psychological help?” Cal asked.

  “Yeah, like a child counselor or something, I don’t know,” Antonia said with a sigh. “He just seemed…really upset. And scared. His mother has taught him not to come to you with his problems, and that’s a bad habit that you need to get him to break as soon as possible.” She paused again, and Cal saw her hang her head low between her shoulders, like the fight had seeped out of her. “If you care, anyway…” she muttered under her breath.

  The words stung, but it wasn’t like they were untrue or anything. As far as Cal was concerned, Bobby wasn’t really his son, not in any way that counted. There was no room in Cal’s life for a child, not even one that seemed as smart and sensitive as Bobby.