by BJ Bentley
“You.” He pointed at Tierney. “Be good for Sophie.”
“Dad.” She rolled her eyes, and I got the impression that this was a common exchange between the two of them. A routine of sorts.
Damon planted a kiss to the top of her head and he was gone.
“Just you and me, nugget. What do you want to do?”
If seven-year-olds were capable of evil grins, the one that spread across Tierney’s face would have terrified me. “Do you have a computer?”
***
We spent the next two hours pouring over ideas for the science fair. It seemed that Tierney wanted us to beat Miss Sterling’s class as much as I did, and the girl was ruthless. At their age, the students didn’t enter the science fair as individual contestants. They entered as a class, so each project was a group project. It fostered teamwork as well as ensured that there were no individual winners or losers, so no one got singled out. That would change as they got older, but for now, it was important to their development not to foster any sense of isolation. At least, in my opinion anyway. There were always those parents who believed that their kid was the best kid or the smartest kid and therefore deserved singular credit, but that wasn’t what the Pearl Eastman Elementary science fair was about.
“Where were you last year?” It had suddenly occurred to me that I’d never asked Damon where Tierney had transferred from. He’d told me that he didn’t want her in private school because he thought it’d be easier to hide her real identity in a public school, but where did she complete kindergarten and first grade? “What school did you go to?”
“I didn’t. I was homeschooled.”
“With Chloe?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I had a tutor.” She frowned like she was trying to remember something. “She was okay. My dad liked her. But then one day he didn’t like her anymore and she left.” She shrugged like that was the end of the story and it didn’t matter anymore.
But, I thought it did matter. Because I could only imagine what it meant for Damon to ‘like’ someone and then ‘not like’ them anymore. He’d slept with her and when things went south, he fired her. Or he broke her heart, and she quit. Either way, it sounded like typical Damon behavior, and I felt like a fool for thinking he wasn’t exactly what the media portrayed him to be.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hm?” I realized I was scowling something fierce. “Nothing. What do you think about this project?” I pointed to the laptop screen. We’d chosen three different potential projects and were going to let the class vote on which one we were going to present at the science fair.
“Yeah, that one’s good,” she said, but she was looking at me with too much worry for her young face to carry.
I felt bad that my less than complimentary thoughts regarding her father were obviously showing on my face, and she could, no doubt, read my change in mood. My feelings for Damon were more and more confusing every day, but they were my burden, not Tierney’s.
“Great!” I plastered a smile on my face. “Wanna watch a movie?”
***
We were thirty minutes into our second Doctor Who episode- I’d argued a compelling case on behalf of Tangled and still lost- when Damon came back. I turned my head in the direction of the front door when I heard it open, but didn’t bother to lift my head from where it rested against the back of the couch.
“Hey, doll.”
“Hey,” I replied, my voice flat and disinterested.
He raised his brow in question at my dead tone but didn’t say anything.
“Hey, Daddy,” Tierney called, also not bothering to raise her head from where it rested on a throw pillow at the end of the couch.
Damon, not happy with our lackluster reactions to his arrival, was more than happy to force our affections. He made himself comfortable in the middle of the couch, lifting Tierney and swinging her around, so her head rested on his thigh. Then, he pulled me into his side with his arm around my shoulders. He slipped his shoes off and kicked his feet up onto my coffee table, relaxing back with a contented sigh. “This is exactly what I needed.”
Chapter 22
Sophie
I’d been kidnapped.
I had no idea where I was or how I got there.
All I knew was that Damon’s positively sinful body was above me, and I was lost in a sea of blissful rapture. I clutched at him, not willing to let him go since he was the only thing I knew. He gripped me just as tightly, his hips pumping as he thrust into me over and over. His rhythm faltered at the same time I felt the muscles of his back clench.
“Come with me, Sophie,” he grunted.
“Damon,” I gasped.
“Come with me.
“I’m not-”
“Come. With. Me.” Each word was punctuated with a thrust.
I had been about to say that I wasn’t quite there yet, but my body proved that it was, in fact, susceptible to following Damon’s orders. My pussy clamped down, milking his cock for all it was worth at the same time Damon’s control snapped. He ground his hips into me, creating a delicious friction between his skin and my clit, prolonging my orgasm as he emptied himself into me.
His breath fanned my face as he struggled to control his oxygen intake. I was no better, panting like I’d just completed a triathlon.
Slowly, he pulled out of me with a groan. “God, Sophie, could you feel any better?”
We’d foregone the condoms in favor of me being on birth control, and even I had to admit, though not aloud, that being skin to skin with Damon was something next to the divine. Still, it was one more barrier to intimacy that Damon had managed to obliterate, with or without my compliance. I didn’t know how he did it, but each time we were together, I gave him a little bit more of myself. He was so good at weaseling his way past my defenses that I never saw the attack coming until it was too late and I was waving a white flag of surrender. No matter how determined my brain was to fight him, my body wanted him to win. And, I feared, so did my heart.
“I’m going to assume that question was rhetorical and not answer,” I quipped.
“I’m pretty sure I already know the answer, but give me about thirty minutes and I’ll double check.” My eyes were closed, but the smile that was on his face was evident in his voice.
“Thirty minutes? What are you, an old man? Get it up, cowboy,” I teased.
He made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a groan. “I’ve never come so hard in my life. Cut me some slack.”
My brain chose that moment to remind me of what Tierney had told me the day before about her tutor. I knew Damon had a history. We both did. But, I hated to think that he compared being with me to him being with anybody else, and knowing that I wasn’t the first of his daughter’s teachers to get the Damon Hatch Experience made my stomach sour. “It’s getting late,” I said, rolling to the edge of the bed and snagging my robe from where I’d tossed it earlier.
The day before, after the three of us had watched T.V. on my couch, Damon had ordered pizza for us. We ate dinner together before he took Tierney home, and even though we spent the night apart, he’d managed to coerce me, with Tierney’s help, into joining them on another Sunday Funday. We’d spent the day at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and I marveled at just how much knowledge Tierney actually retained from the books I usually saw her reading. I’d never met her mother, but as far as I could see, she was all Damon based solely on the size of her brain. It was fair to say that I was thoroughly smitten with that girl, and I needed to find the line between being her teacher and being her father’s...what? Fuck buddy? God, I couldn’t even think about that right now.
After our day at the museum and dinner, Damon dropped me off at home before taking Tierney home and making sure she got to bed. It was a school night, after all. He didn’t warn me that he’d be back, so I was shoulder deep in a bubble bath with an avocado face mask slathered on my skin when he showed back up, somehow getting past my locked front door and scaring t
he shit out of me.
“Well, then come back to bed, and we’ll sleep. Though, let the record show, I’d much rather fuck you again.” He looked at the clock. “In twenty-five minutes.”
“It’s a school night,” I said, tiredly, making my way to the bathroom. I uncapped the toothpaste, squeezing a healthy amount onto my toothbrush, and began the brush-spit-rinse cycle just as Damon’s arms came around me.
“Doll, you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
I spit into the sink. “Nothing’s on my mind except for the fact that it’s getting late, and we both have to work tomorrow.” I continued to brush just to avoid having to say anything else.
His eyes met mine in the mirror. His suspicious gaze clashed with my shifty one. “Is that all?”
I rinsed and spit again. “Yep.”
“Okay,” he sighed, dropping his arms and stepping back.
I couldn’t bear to watch him leave, so I shut the door and busied myself with the rest of my nightly routine, which really didn’t involve much else at that point other than peeing since I’d taken a bath and given myself a facial earlier. I dug around in the cabinet under the sink for a bottle of toner April had given me for my birthday and squirted some onto a cotton ball. I swept it over my face and was immediately reminded why I never used the stuff.
“Ouch!” I hissed. The shit burned. I’d forgotten that it was one of those alpha-hydroxy toners, and my skin was way too sensitive to tolerate what essentially amounted to a chemical peel in a bottle. I set the bottle on the sink with the intention of returning it to my sister but thought better of it. I knocked it off the edge and into the trash. April would never know.
Out of ways to stall, I figured Damon must be gone by now, so I opened the door and stepped back into the bedroom. And there was Damon, in my bed. He was shirtless with the blankets pulled up to his waist. He was lounging against the pillows with his hands behind his head looking like he was waiting for a nymph to feed him grapes and fan him with a palm frond.
“Done hiding?”
“I thought you’d left,” I murmured, my eyes catching on his open duffle bag on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Just went downstairs to get my bag.” He sat up, so he could face me fully. “I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, Soph, but I’m here because I want to be, and if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that you want me here too.”
“I...I do,” I admitted.
“And what we have here is more than just sex.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to agree with him, but the words left my lips anyway. “It is.”
He visibly relaxed. “Then, darlin’, come to bed.” He reached his hand out for me.
“You’ve never called me that before. Darlin’.”
“I’m expanding my horizons.” He smiled like the cheeky bastard he was.
I took the hand he offered me and let him pull me onto the bed. I shed my robe before crawling under the covers. Curling into him, with my head on his shoulder, I realized he was still naked, too. I snuggled in, prepared to sleep, but I still had unanswered questions, though I wasn’t sure they were really important anymore. Still, I wanted to know.
“Did you sleep with Tierney’s tutor?” I blurted.
Damon stilled underneath me for a moment before his body began to quake. I chanced a peek up at his face.
“Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny,” I said, perhaps feeling a little haughty.
He calmed himself enough to ask, “Is that what crawled up your ass earlier? You thought I’d slept with Phyllis, my daughter’s sixty-year-old tutor?” He started laughing again, though now, he had to wipe the tears from his eyes.
Sixty? Tierney didn’t mention that part. Plus, I had to admit, I may have jumped to conclusions. “Well, why did she quit?” I asked a little sheepishly.
“She didn’t quit. I fired her when I caught her trying to steal from me. Not because I slept with her. Jesus,” he muttered, still amused.
“Oh.”
He squeezed me with the arm that was wrapped around my waist. “You are just so damn determined to keep me at arm’s length, you will grasp onto any reason to make me the bad guy.”
“Not true!” Totally true.
“Give it up, Sophie.” He rolled us, so he was laying mostly on top of me. “What are you going to do when you run out of excuses?”
I laid there, silent, refusing to meet the challenge in his eyes.
“Christ, you’ll probably start making some up,” he muttered. “Listen to me and actually hear me, Sophie. I’ve been waiting months to be right here.” He nudged my legs apart as he spoke and slid into me in one smooth thrust. “There’s no way I’m going to let you fuck it up. So, keep trying to push me away.” He slid out and back in again, adopting a leisurely pace. “Keep coming up with excuses as to why this won’t work. Keep lying to me. Keep lying to yourself. Do whatever you’ve got to do to fight me, but remember one thing.”
“Wha-what’s that?” His lazy thrusts were driving me mad.
“I always win. So, you can keep fighting me, doll, but I’ll fight back. And I fight dirty.”
He began alternating his slow glides with planting himself deep and grinding against my clit. My toes began to curl, and I knew when it came over me, it was going to be intense. He didn’t stop until I sang his name like a diva on Grammy night.
Chapter 23
Damon
I’d be pissed if it wasn’t so fucking ridiculous. It’s a good thing that the idea of sleeping with Phyllis is so goddamn laughable because Sophie’s continued resistance was getting fucking frustrating. I’d known that pursuing Sophie and building something with her was going to be a challenge right from the start, but I wasn’t used to having to work so damn hard. At least I got her to admit that what we had was more than sex. I may have lied to her when I said I didn’t want her to fall in love with me, but she didn’t need to know that, yet, since she was clearly still skittish.
Sophie had no idea how much I needed her, so she just might be underestimating my determination. I could use that to my advantage. I was plotting my next maneuver when my phone buzzed. Sophie was passed out cold with her head on my chest, so I slipped as stealthily as I could from under her and out of the bed. I wished I hadn’t the second I saw the text message on my screen.
“Damon,” Sophie mumbled, her voice slightly muffled from being face down in her pillow.
“Go back to sleep, darlin’. I have to make a quick call, and I’ll be right back.”
I walked, naked as a jaybird, out of the bedroom and down the hall so I wouldn’t disturb her before hitting the call button on my screen.
“Oh, Damon,” my mother answered, sounding rather despondent.
“Ma, what’s the matter?” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling as I spoke, knowing better than to ask Vera Hatch such a loaded question and yet doing it anyway.
“Well, I just don’t think this is the place for me, Damon. The service is lacking and the spa doesn’t even carry that coconut lemon verbena body scrub I like.”
My mother was as high maintenance as they come. She was also neurotic. “Ma, you’re staying the luxury suite of a five star hotel. I’m sure the service is top notch, and you can probably buy that body stuff online.”
A heavy sigh filtered over the line. “Damon, I just don’t understand why I can’t stay with you.” She wasn’t just using her ‘mom voice,’ she was using her ‘southern mom voice,’ which was a thousand times worse. Southern mom voice meant that I’d disappointed her with my lack of manners and was therefore about to be subjected to a guilt trip that would take far more than eighty days to complete.
I didn’t have enough luggage for that, so I had to head it off at the pass. “Mother,” said in the no-bullshit tone I usually reserved for business meetings. “You haven’t seen your granddaughter since she was a baby. You can’t just come barreling into her life. She doesn’t know you.”
“Well,
she should know me,” she huffed.
“I agree, but you could have been making that effort all along. You can’t just show up and say, ‘Surprise! I’m your grandma!’”
“Damon-”
“No, Ma, I mean it. Let me talk to Tierney. Give me a chance to tell her about you first. Then, we’ll set something up.”
She sighed again, but gave in. “Fine. Whatever you think is best, dear.”
We said our goodbyes and ended the call. I let out a sigh of my own as I rubbed the back of my neck. I wanted to believe my mom had good intentions, but neither she nor my father had had any interest in Tierney until now. Neither did Georgia’s parents. I’d always chalked it up to their conservative beliefs regarding children born out of wedlock and the so-called scandal associated with them. Tierney was aware she had grandparents, but we never talked about them. I didn’t want to remind her that she had family who apparently couldn’t be bothered with getting to know her. Tierney was the single most important thing in my life, and when both sets of grandparents and her own mother essentially abandoned her, I made it my life’s mission to be everything and everyone that she would ever need.
I leveled my eyes on the bedroom door and thought about the woman on the other side of it. I imagined what it would be like to share the responsibility of raising Tierney with Sophie. What kind of mother would she be? Incredible, I was sure. Would we have more children? We would, if I had any say in the matter. Sophie and Tierney were already smitten with each other, and even though Tierney had a good female role model in Chloe, it wasn’t the same as having a mom. Plus, despite whatever effort Georgia was determined to make, she was too selfish to be a real mom, and I didn’t care what my lack of faith in her said about me. I didn’t care if I was being an unforgiving hardass. What I cared about was Tierney. And now, Sophie.
I shook off my current familial frustrations and tried to shut my brain down as I walked back into the bedroom, setting my phone on the nightstand, and climbing back into bed. I was barely back under the covers when Sophie rolled into me, still fast asleep, and curled herself over my chest. I wrapped my arm around her, smiling to myself.
