by Whitley Cox
I spotted Amy across the room. We locked eyes. I looked down at my kid and then back at her. She nodded, reading me loud and clear. She’d keep an eye on Carly while I slipped away for a moment. I knew I could count on her to keep my kid happy and where I was headed a secret.
With Daisy still muttering apologies behind me, Sam spirited me away from the masses.
“Damn, your parents have white carpet, is this such a good idea? I’m dripping,” I asked, once we were down the hallway and at the foot of the stairs.
Without saying anything, just a smile on that gorgeous face of his, he scooped me up and carried me up the stairs.
Giggling, I looped my arms around his neck. “What would Connie say right now if she saw us?”
“I don’t want to even think about it,” he muttered. We made it to the top of the stairs, but he didn’t put me down. Instead he turned left and took the second door on the right. It wasn’t until we were inside a yellow, white and green bathroom, and the door was securely closed, that he set my butt down on the counter.
“Stay here,” he said as he opened the door again and closed it behind him. In less than a minute he was back, holding what looked like a red T-shirt.
“I’m fine, Sam, really. Maybe just a washcloth to clean up this sticky mess, but I don’t need a new shirt. Is that your mother’s shirt?”
He shook his head and ordered me to lift my arms up, his fingers curling around the hem of my shirt. “No, it’s mine. I knew I’d left a shirt here from last summer.” Slowly, because it was wet, he peeled my shirt up over my head until I was sitting there in just my lacy peach bra, my skin damp and sticky. He tossed the shirt into the sink, then grabbed a white washcloth from the cupboard, running it under the faucet.
“I-I can do it,” I stammered. All the oxygen left my lungs, and my chest ached as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest from the intense heat that was radiating off his immense frame. He shook his head again and swatted my hand away before he began to dab gently and wipe the warm, soapy cloth over my neck, collarbone, then down between my breasts. His eyes were fixed on my breasts, watching the nipples bead into hard, achy tips beneath my bra. I knew he could see them. Hell, I’m sure they were visible from space.
I swallowed. “Sam?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t bother lifting his head, but just continued to wash me.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, almost painfully so, he lifted his head. Interest and craving deepened his eyes to the color of the sky right before midnight strikes. His nostrils flared. My knees were spread, and he’d situated himself between my legs. He leaned forward. The front of his pants grazed my thigh. He was hard as a fucking rock.
I licked my lips.
“I think I’m clean,” I whispered.
Now it was his turn to swallow. His big Adam’s apple bobbed heavy in his throat, and I ached to lean out and run my tongue over it.
He dropped the cloth into the sink with my shirt without looking and grabbed the back of my neck. I locked my ankles around his waist, pressing my body against his. His hungry eyes nearly devoured me.
“Now,” I panted. “Please.” Despite the sudden taste of danger that rifled through my body, we needed this. Libido and lust, months of longing and wild fantasies fueled the desire to finally come together, no matter where we were or how.
He groaned, low and guttural. It dug down deep inside me and took hold.
It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t planned, but fuck if it wasn’t hot. With just a fleeting look of hesitation that was quickly swamped by need and lust, his mouth crashed down on mine. He forced his tongue into my mouth, heated, insistent. I gasped at the ferocity of it. He owned my mouth, took control of my tongue. With long, sweeping glides he explored. I joined him. His free hand came up, and he cupped my breast, kneading the heavy weight of it before pulling back the fabric of my bra and tweaking a sensitive nipple. I groaned into his mouth and arched my back, encouraging more, demanding more. My heart pounded and blood rushed in my ears. I shut my eyes as everything started to spin gloriously out of control. Before I knew it, his shirt was off, and we were struggling to get our pants undone.
Fingers fumbled with zippers and buttons, but we were too crazed with need to pull our lips apart. We’d been planning this, thinking about it, dreaming about it for much longer than just this past week. His lips on my skin was all I’d craved for months, searing hot and laced heavily with passion. I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t want his kisses to end. He went to pull away so he could send his jeans to the floor, but I snagged his bottom lip between my teeth and tugged.
Sam chuckled. “I know. I’m right there with you.” His words were muffled as he struggled to speak with his lip in my teeth. “Just a sec, I swear. Then I’ll kiss you again.”
I whimpered but released him. It just felt like if I let him go, then I was breaking the spell and we’d come to our senses and not have crazy monkey sex in his parents’ upstairs bathroom during his son’s first birthday party with a house full of people downstairs. He finished with his belt, sending his jeans to the floor. They landed with a loud thunk. His erection tented his dark gray boxers, a damp patch just to the left where his pre-cum had leaked through.
Color filled his cheeks and a voracious look lit his eyes as he stood there panting. His gaze climbed my body. I was sitting there on the bathroom counter in my bra with my breasts out and my jeans halfway down my thighs. My cheeks were warm and my chest rose and fell as if I’d just sprinted up the stairs.
I ran my tongue between the seam of my lips. They were swollen and I’m sure bruised from the savagery of his kisses. I wanted more of that. I wanted brutal passion, wild lust. I wanted Sam to take me right there, hard, fast and furiously. We’d do sweet and gentle another day. But today I wanted raw sex.
He cupped the back of my neck again and hauled himself forward, his mouth taking mine as if he owned it. I moaned when I felt his length press against my thigh. I needed my pants all the way off; I could barely spread my legs. I needed to wrap my legs around his waist and let him drive home. I was just about to pull away and shimmy out of my jeans when a harsh knock on the door had us both stilling.
“Sam?” It was Daisy.
“What?” he barked.
“Uh … you need to come downstairs, now.”
“I’m a little busy. Can it wait?”
“No. M showed up, and Gemma is freaking out.”
Suddenly all the color drained from Sam’s face, and within seconds he was fully dressed again. He shot me a look. “Put your shirt on.” Then he was opening the door to find his sister, equally pale, standing there looking as if she were ready to barf from having to be the bearer of such bad news.
Who the heck was M?
Sam’s feet thudded down the stairs like a herd of angry rhinos, and then I heard a muttered, “Not fucking happening.”
Daisy gave me a sympathetic look as I dressed myself. She didn’t seem fazed that her brother and I were up here, and I was too terrified from Sam’s immediate reaction to her news to be embarrassed about my state of undress. We were all grownups, and grownups did things.
“M is our code name for Sam’s ex. The children’s mother. We had to stop saying her name around Gemma because it upset her too much, so now we speak of her as little as we can. But when we have to, it’s just M,” she explained as I followed her down the stairs.
My eyes went wide. Holy shit, his ex is here.
We wandered into the kitchen and dining room area, where I found Mary on the floor with Landon, but he was getting upset. Gemma was off in the corner crying, but Sam, his father, Meegan’s parents and Meegan were nowhere to be found.
Parents and tots were all hunkered down in the living room playing and chatting, paper plates with cake sat in front of them, and everyone nibbled away. Amy’s gaze snagged mine. She had Henry and Carly next to her. They were all happily eating cake. I shook my head, mouthing the word “ex.” Her big amber eyes went wide as sh
e mouthed back, “Shit.” I simply nodded. I wandered over to the corner where Gemma was crying and Daisy was attempting to make her feel better.
“Can I try?” I asked, feeling like I needed to do something but not entirely sure what.
Daisy stepped back. “Be my guest.”
I bent down to Gemma’s level. “You’re upset.”
She sniffled and nodded.
“Want to talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“There are a lot of people here right now, eh?”
She simply nodded, wiping the back of her wrist beneath her nose.
“Kind of overwhelming.”
She nodded again.
“Want to go read some books? I hear you love books. Is there a special place that’s quiet where we could go and read together?”
She looked up at me. Her face was red and splotchy, and her gorgeous green eyes were watery and puffy. “You’re Carly’s mummy.”
I smiled. “I am.”
“Carly likes dinosaurs.”
“She does.”
“She’s a good sharer.”
“Is she?”
“Yeah. She always lets me play with her favorite long-neck dinosaur at playgroup.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Carly’s favorite was the Triceratops. She couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of the long-necked ones. But Gemma didn’t need to know that.
“That’s very nice of her.”
“Can Carly come read too? And Landon?”
I nodded, reaching for her hand. I glanced at Amy, who at that moment was uncrossing her legs and standing up. She ushered Carly across the room to me.
“Nana,” Gemma said, tugging on the hem of her grandmother’s blouse. “Can we have Landon? We’re all going to go upstairs and read.”
Mary’s eyes found mine. I shrugged. “It’s what she wants to do. I don’t mind at all. You guys see to the guests. It’s probably better that we’re on a different floor, anyway.” Every so often I heard a raised voice or a “fuck” from beyond the door to the study. I knew it was only a matter of time before the door opened and the chaos behind it spilled out into the rest of the house. Kids didn’t need to see that. And if Gemma was upset because her mother had showed up, I was going to do my damnedest to protect her if I could.
Mary nodded and passed me Landon. “There is a whole bookshelf full of children’s books in the upstairs bedroom to the right.”
“Thanks.”
It wasn’t too long before Gemma, Carly, Landon and I were all snuggled up on the futon where Gemma said she normally slept, a big quilt over all of us as well as a heaping pile of books. Gemma was to my right, Carly to my left and Landon in my lap as I read “Harvey the Happy Puppy: Harvey Goes to the Dentist.”
“I like you,” Gemma said with a yawn a short while later.
I chuckled. “I like you, too.”
She snuggled up tight to me, and every so often when I looked down, her eyes would be shut. But then she’d shake herself awake or a giggle from Carly or Landon would make her sit up straight and pay attention again. “You’re a good mummy. And you make funny voices when you read. My daddy makes funny voices, too.”
“Does he?”
“Yeah. He’s silly, too.” She cuddled in tighter to me, linking her arm though mine. “My mummy is here.”
I stilled. Was this a can of worms I should be opening up? I mean, I didn’t open it. Gemma did. Should I redirect? Try to cram those worms back into their can?
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She’s not a good mummy. She left me and Landon when he was a baby.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. I don’t like her. She’s scary and wears a lot of makeup.” She reached up and cupped my face. “You have a sparkle in your nose.”
I smiled at her. “I do.”
“It’s really pretty. Can I touch it?”
Nodding, I said, “Sure. But gently.”
With a mild tremble to her tiny, pale hand, she brought her casted arm up, and one little crooked finger stroked across the tiny stud in my nose. She was incredibly gentle. Her perfect little mouth was open just a touch in awe and her eyes widened in fascination.
“So pretty,” she said. “I like this better than makeup.”
“Thank you. I like this better than makeup, too.”
“Shhh,” Carly said, her finger in front of her mouth. “Baby sleeping.” She pointed to Landon in my lap, where sure enough the little tyke was zonked out, a big string of drool cascading down his chin and onto his “BIRTHDAY DUDE” T-shirt.
I adjusted him so his neck wasn’t so cricked, then continued reading. It wasn’t too long before both Carly and Gemma were also passed out on either side of me and my eyes were beginning to droop. I decided to give in to the yawns and the heavy lids, despite how overheated I was being covered in kids and a blanket, and instead, reorganized us all on the bed so we were all a bit more comfortable, drew the blanket up over everyone evenly and let my eyes close.
Chapter 14
Sam
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snapped, having snagged my ex’s arm so tight and so hard when I saw her spindly frame standing there in the kitchen arguing with my father that I thought I might snap her limb in half. I hauled her ass through the kitchen and into the study faster than she could blink. Her parents followed, along with my father. She’d been crouched down speaking to Gemma, who had big tears in her eyes and was trying to pull away. Meegan’s long French-tipped fingers were wrapped around my daughter’s wrist, and she wasn’t letting go.
“It’s my son’s birthday party, why wouldn’t I be here?” Meegan sneered back, her hands on her sharp hips. Dear lord, the woman had lost weight. She’d always been on the slender side, but now she looked skeletal.
“He’s not your son. You walked out on him, remember? You have no right to be here anymore.”
She rolled her dark gray eyes as if I were being melodramatic and it hadn’t been nine months, one week and three days since either of her children had seen or heard from her.
“He will always be my son. I have rights.”
“You signed those away. Do I need to call my lawyer?” my father put in. I could hear him grinding his molars behind me. The man was possibly more tightly wound than I was, while Meegan’s parents, Vicki and Neil, stood to my right, both of them slack-jawed. They weren’t about to side with their daughter, but I’d also beg to guess that they were probably happy to see her.
Meegan gave my dad a sardonic eye roll. “Sure, big Russ, call your lawyers. There’s not much they can do to deny biology, though. I’m their mother.”
“As much as any egg donor is,” my dad snapped back. “Sam became mother and father the day you walked out on your children. The day you left your babies to ‘go find yourself.’ ”
“I believe in self-care,” Meegan said indignantly as she flipped her newly dyed platinum hair over her shoulder. She’d always been blonde, but never this white blonde. It looked almost gray.
My father’s reins were fraying rapidly; the man was about to snap. “Then book a weekly massage, like the rest of us. You don’t abandon your children.”
“I did what I had to do to take care of me.”
“While Sam took care of your kids.”
“I knew he would. He’s a good father.”
“He’s an excellent father,” Meegan’s father said, breaking the silence from his side of the room. “Why are you really here, Meegan?”
“I want to see my kids.”
I shook my head. “No fucking way.” My fists bunched at my side, and a dull ache ran up the length of my jaw from how hard I was clenching it.
“You can’t keep me from my children, Sam. I will see them.”
“Why the fuck are you here, Meegan? We haven’t heard jack-shit from you in over nine months. Why now?”
A gentle, feminine hand on my shoulder from Vicki made me bring my voice down a couple of decibels. It wasn’t until then that
I realized I was yelling.
“I’m ready to be a part of their lives.”
“Fuck that!” I spat.
“I’m their mother.”
“When it’s fucking convenient. A mother doesn’t abandon her children when things get tough.”
“I needed to take care of myself.”
I lifted my chin, leaned back against my father’s old oak desk and crossed my ankles. “Then tell us, how have you spent the last nine months ‘taking care’ of yourself? Enlighten us all on your self-improvement and self-care. Why are you now finally capable and interested in being a mother?”
“I’ve been traveling.”
“For work?”
She shook her head. “No. I quit my job. I flew to Europe and went backpacking. I realized I was too young to be a mother. I wanted to see the world and explore, meet new people, experience new cultures and find myself. I couldn’t do that if I had kids. But now that I’ve done it, I feel good and I’m ready to be a family again.”
Rage pumped hot and fast through me as I engaged in some top notch self-control and didn’t rear off the table to strangle the woman. She was off backpacking through Europe while I raised our children. Holy fucking Christ, I was going to lose it.
But my father lost it first. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You think parenting is something you can just put on hold or pause until it better suites your life? You’ve got a hell of a nerve coming into my house after what you just said, you self-righteous, vapid little brat. You’re not getting anywhere near my grandchildren, especially not now that we know where you’ve been this past year. Here we all thought you were working, but you were off gallivanting and probably spreading your legs for every man that bought you a drink.”
Vicki inhaled next to me but didn’t say anything.
Meegan glowered at my dad. Only when her brows pinched and her eyes squinted, it made her look hilarious. She was wearing far too much makeup. I’d always thought she wore too much. Like Ben, I preferred the natural look.
