“Thanks again, for… everything,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. She walked up to me and kissed me, on the lips. It wasn’t hungry, or needy; it was grateful. “Are you gonna be okay tonight?”
“I wanted to ask... could you... could you stay here tonight?” she asked. Her hand closed around mine. She had just been taken apart and cleaned like a rifle. I didn’t want to leave her, and she didn’t want me to leave either.
“What about Michael?”
“There’s no more Michael. I would ask you to come upstairs, but the kids are asleep in my bed.”
“You want me to sleep with you?”
“I get it if you don’t want to... I just-”
“I’ll stay,” I said. She went back upstairs to grab a blanket and some pillows, even though it was pretty hot, and we likely wouldn’t need the blanket. I took my shoes, shirt, and jeans off. She didn’t ask me to put anything back on when she came back down and saw me. I didn’t realize how much smaller she was than me until we were lying down.
The couch wasn’t small, I could stretch out pretty comfortably, and she didn’t take up that much space, so we wouldn’t wake up sore. She started with her back to me but flipped over, so she was on her front. The size of the couch meant most of her body was draped over mine. Not a bad thing at all.
She fell asleep with her head on my chest.
14
Veronica
We had lost the blanket sometime during the night.
It was six in the morning, but the sun was already up. Thad was on his back. His arm was around me. I had ended up falling asleep with my head on his chest. The pain following the procedure hadn’t been excruciating, but it had made it harder for me to sleep. I raised my head to look at him. His face was placid and smooth. His chest rose and fell rhythmically with his breathing.
As I moved his arm loosened around me. I had spent a lot of time ogling the man without his clothes on, but now I could do it without him looking back at me and teasing me when he caught me staring. He was... something else. I put my hand down flat on his stomach where he had no tattoos. I could finally get a good look at those things now that he was out.
The one below his navel that would sometimes be covered by his underwear was probably my favorite of the ones that I had seen.
Hellish.
Sounded about right. I gently traced over the letters and looked at his face to see if he would stir. He didn’t. I probably should have felt a little bit more like a creep for putting my hands all over him like that while he was asleep, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was sleeping.
I let my fingers slip below the waistband of his underwear. I kept going until I felt his dick. Michael and I were over; I could do this now. For the first time, putting my hands on Thaddeus, I let the lust take over.
Fuck Michael.
How much more of my mental economy was he going to take up? He had chewed me up and spit me out, and somehow, there was Thad. Thad who didn’t seem to mind that I was another guy’s reject. I pushed away the feeling that this was likely as good as it was going to get and concentrated on the fact that Thad’s dick was in my hand. It was semi hard but already pretty big. He still hadn’t woken up. He had to be fucking with me now. There was no way he had a hand on his dick, and it didn’t wake him up.
“Thaddeus?” I whispered. Nothing. I tightened my hold around his dick and squeezed a little. I carefully pulled it out and ran my hand up and down it a little bit. Nothing. This was beginning to get ridiculous. He was totally awake. He was just playing with me to see how far I would take it.
It was six in the morning. The kids wouldn’t be awake for a little while; I could get away with this. I lowered my face to his crotch and carefully licked the tip before sucking it into my mouth. He moved and grunted a little bit. There we go. I sucked slowly, sinking lower. He was getting harder, which meant harder to swallow too. One of the good things about having, or not having sex with Michael was I never had to do this for him. It was more that he didn’t want me to, rather than me unwilling to give it.
He was definitely awake now. I felt his hand find the back of my head and grab the hair there in his fist. He groaned as I slowly—very slowly—swallowed his entire length, to the hilt.
“Yeah, just like that,” he growled. I breathed slowly through my nose as I swallowed around his cock. He groaned and used his hand to control my head in an up and down bobbing motion. I peered up at him, wanting to see his face. His head was back, but his chest and the muscles in his arm were tense. I wished he would look down at me. I wanted to see how much he loved it.
A perverse pleasure at the power the position gave me swelled. I used my hands to hold his balls in my hand and gently squeeze. He responded immediately, tightening his grip on my hair and moving my head faster. He was completely at my mercy. I loved the fact that he was letting me do it for him.
“I’m going to come,” he said to me. His voice was strained. I wanted to push him over the edge. I swallowed his length all the way down my throat and sucked my cheeks in. His hips pushed forwards, and he groaned as a hot, thick liquid made its way down my throat. He shot rope after rope, and I tried my best to make sure I got it all.
I gently let his dick slip out of my mouth. I stood and looked down at him. He sat up, there was a sheen of sweat on his chest, and he was panting slightly.
“Getting you to kiss me back just yesterday was a problem. What changed?”
I shrugged coquettishly. My marital status; that was what.
“I’m not paying you for all the times you’ve taken care of the kids for me. I just thought some sort of reward was in order.”
“You’re going to pay me in blowjobs, like a whore?”
“Not just blowjobs,” I said. He grinned, standing up. He kissed me. “Do you want a shower? I’ll get you a towel.”
He pulled me back into him cupping my ass.
“I can think of a lot of things that I would prefer to a shower right now,” he said.
“The kids are going to be awake any minute,” I warned him. He held me to him and kissed me again before he finally let go. He grabbed his clothes and followed me upstairs. I handed him a towel; he could use Bart’s room to get changed back into his clothes. I helped myself to a couple of Midol before going back downstairs.
I went through the house pulling the curtains open.
What a way to start the day... what a nice way. Today felt great. The day before had ended so terribly; this one had no choice but to go better. I felt somehow... lighter, and it wasn’t because I had had my womb scraped raw the night before. Michael had finally admitted defeat. He had finally agreed to what I had been trying to get him to agree to do for weeks now. He wasn’t going to fight me anymore. In his own words, he was done. He was done, and Thad could have me.
That was probably one of the nicest things he had ever said to me—or done for me. The sexual tension between Thad and I was getting to the point that if we didn’t fuck already, one of us would have a breakdown or the frustration would express itself in some other destructive way.
I realized with some surprise that I hadn’t eaten since the evening before. I went to the kitchen and took a bowl out and started spooning flour, buttermilk, and eggs into it to make breakfast. Right on cue the children noisily clambered down the stairs in their pajamas to eat. They grumbled their morning greetings, coming up to me for hugs and kisses.
“What do you guys want on your pancakes?” I asked.
“Blueberries,” Christopher said, answering for both of them, sitting down at the table. It was generally their favorite; one of the few things they had in common was their shared hatred of raisins which was the second option I had on offer. I poured a glass of orange juice for him and made tea for Nicolette. It was more milk and water than tea, but she liked to have it because it was what her dad drank in the morning, and what I drank. I started on the pancakes, serving them onto the kids’ plates hot as they came off the pan
.
“Are you still gonna make breakfast for us every day when we start school?” Nikki asked.
“Of course, you can’t go to school without eating first,” I said. “Why?”
“Sometimes Mom would just give us candy bars in the morning when she woke up late,” Nikki said, messily spreading maple syrup over her pancakes. Christopher preferred chocolate syrup on his.
Incredible. They were kids, so they didn’t get it, but the things they told me about Laurie were just disgusting. I wasn’t a parent, but I liked to think of myself as getting there at this point. Thad walked in, pulling his shirt over his head. His hair was damp from the shower, and he looked at the scene of the children at the table eating breakfast like he had just walked into the wrong house.
“Hi Thad,” Christopher said. “When did you get here?”
“Thad slept over,” I said, looking at him. He smirked at me.
“Where?”
“On the couch,” he supplied. He walked over to the fridge and looked inside. He would never get anything out, all the times I had seen him do that.
“Do you want breakfast? I’m making pancakes.”
“They’re super good,” Nikki said with her mouth full. He closed the fridge and walked up to me, grabbing some of the blueberries I was using to make the pancakes and eating them.
“I don’t really eat breakfast. No coffee maker?”
“Just tea. Nobody in the house drinks it” I told him. He sighed and pulled his hand through his hair. “Sit. Have some of these,” I told him.
“I should get going,” he said. “Are you gonna be okay?”
“Come on, I insist,” I said. He smiled and ate another blueberry.
“What did you use to make these?”
“Blueberries, buttermilk, flour-”
“You make them from scratch? Aunt Jemima costs two dollars at the store,” he said. I picked a plate up and piled a few on it and handed it to him.
“Once you’ve had mine, you’ll never want hers again,” I said sweetly. He smiled and kissed me. I heard Nikki giggle from the table, while Christopher smiled knowingly. Thad went over to the table.
“What are you guys doing today?” he asked the kids.
“I want to go swimming,” Christopher said.
“We’ll see whether we can make it,” I said.
“I know a pretty good pool,” Thad said suddenly. I made myself a cup of tea and sat with them at the table, across from Thad.
“Oh yeah? Where? I was thinking the Sports Center or YMCA.”
“Both of those are shitty. You want to go swimming with other people? Gross,” he said, making the kids laugh. I shot him a warning look. I didn’t need the kids developing potty mouths. It was a shock they didn’t already have them, with Laurie as their mother. Maybe I wasn’t cutting her enough slack. Yeah, she had abandoned her children, but she would never curse in front of them.
“Well, where do you recommend?”
“I know a place,” he said vaguely. He cut through a couple of pancakes with his fork. He hadn’t dressed them with anything. I watched him put some in his mouth and chew. I hadn’t seen him eat anything in the entire time we had known each other.
“Is it good?” I asked.
“Meh, had better,” he said, eating another bite. He smirked seeing my face. He was fucking with me.
“Can we go?” Christopher asked.
“How about I take you there this weekend?” he said. God. I let him babysit a couple of times, and he feels he can just whisk the kids away whenever he wants?
“Where is it? How far away?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s not too far away. I can drive.”
“I want to go today,” Nikki said.
“Grandpa’s coming today to drop off your school documents, remember?” I asked her. “We can go this weekend. Which day?”
“Saturday,” said the twins at the same time.
“How does Saturday sound?” Thad asked me.
“It sounds great,” I said. “Do you want more?” I asked, indicating his empty plate.
“No. I better get going,” he said. He stood, and I stood with him.
“Can I have more?” Nikki asked. I gave her some more pancakes and joined Thad at the front door where he was putting his shoes on.
“Thanks for staying with me.”
“Thank you for breakfast,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me.
“We can’t do this around the kids,” I said.
“Why not? It’s extremely important that children are exposed to healthy relationships when they’re growing up,” he said loftily. Ha. Healthy, he said.
“Is that what this is? A relationship?”
“We are going on a date this weekend,” he said.
“The kids will be there, that’s not a date.”
“The kids have to go to sleep sometime. That’s when the grown-ups get to play.”
I looked up at Thad. Even if the actual documentation had not gone through all the way, I was home and free. Michael was no longer holding me to the standards of the vows we had taken all those years ago. Why was I so nervous though? Michael was the reason why I wouldn’t let Thad touch me before, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? Now that he was out of the way, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
I hadn’t done this in years. I learned too late that the courtship I had gone through with Michael was nothing like what normal people went through. He was probably joking when he said this was a relationship, but it still made my stomach flip over to hear that word. I didn’t know how to date casually, but I didn’t want a relationship again. Not that soon, did I?
Did it matter that it was him and not anybody else?
“Let’s nix the word date,” I suggested.
“You still want to come, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded. I did want to come. Part of me was curious, and another part just wanted to let the kids live it up as much as possible before they had to go to school again.
“I do. I can’t wait.”
He kissed me one last time and said he’d see me later before leaving.
15
Thaddeus
“Where are you taking us?”
Veronica was sitting in the passenger side of my truck and had asked the question once every couple of miles. She had given the kids her phone, so we were listening to the audio of an old Simpsons episode. I silently approved. It was good that they were watching the classics. I thought about it. They had played Halo at my house, and Veronica had them watching The Simpsons.
I guess it was just normal to expose your child to the same things that you had grown up with, which was, shit it was pretty cool, actually. There it was, reason number two to have children. Raising a person who was exactly like you. Okay, maybe now I saw the appeal, a little bit. What better way to make a mark on the world than to raise a bunch of people who were basically you but smaller?
“You’ll see,” I told her, giving her the same answer I had since we had gotten into the car.
She was going to love it. If she didn’t, the kids would. Since the kids would, she would too. That was how it worked, right? What could she possibly have to complain about? The house in Carmel Valley was probably just like the one she had lived in with Michael. Maybe I’d ask her about that… or maybe not. She was finally letting me touch her; I wasn’t about to remind her that she had a rich guy in San Jose that she was technically still with.
“Whose house are we going to?” Nikki asked from the back seat.
“Mine,” I said.
“What happened to your other house?” Chris asked. I pulled into the driveway.
I opened the driver’s seat and opened up the back for the kids to come out.
“Pool is around the back,” I said. They sped off around the house leaving the bag Veronica had packed behind.
“Your other house?” she asked, unimpressed. “This isn’t where you took the kids when you had them?”
“Nope,” I said, grabbing the bag so she wouldn
’t have to take it. “After you,” I said, letting her walk ahead of me. We went around the house to the back where the pool was. The kids were already inside, splashing each other and bouncing off the diving board. It had come with the house; I hadn’t had it added.
“No running around the pool,” Veronica yelled in their direction. She looked around, and the look on her face was definitely impressed. It was a nice property. There was a garden and a pool, a pool house… why didn’t I live here? I had asked the question before when I was getting the place. The realtor’s face when she noticed the tattoos on my hand as she shook it was enough to answer that question.
I didn’t need to live there. I just needed someone very wealthy to live there and pay me for it. I had a few condos in Carmel by the Sea, but I wanted a place here. Yes, it was very fun seeing the looks on people’s faces when they realized who their landlord was and no, it was not a mistake that I had bought a place in the richest part of the county. I needed to put my money in places where it would multiply itself.
Working contracts was what I did, but I didn’t want to need to do it all the time. It wasn’t a normal day job that would be a reliable source of income till I was ready to retire. I had had to get creative, and I had. One of the things I didn’t like about the Navy was they had you whenever they needed you. I liked the option I had to pick my battles, literally. I didn’t want to be gone all the time, and recently, Monterey had gained a pretty strong draw that was going to defer all my future deployments to a later date.
She was about five foot six and had blue eyes, two kids and an impending divorce.
The realtor had used the words ‘California mission style revival’ which mean absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t need all that house or all the stuck-up, rich neighbors. Veronica was likely less impressed with the house really and had more questions about why I owned it. The realtor had said good things about the neighborhood, but the pool had been a big draw. I would make the trip out to use it when I wanted to swim. I had joined the Navy, for God’s sake. I was a SEAL. I peeled my shirt off and looked at Veronica.
Thaddeus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 2) Page 11