“Good,” I gasped. “Give it to me. Don’t hold out. Just fuck me until you can’t fuck anymore.”
He surged into me and filled me and exploded into me yet again and I came around him, my climax triggered by his, and we came together, crying out as we shattered together—as we were made whole together, each mended by the other.
“Marry me, Laurel,” he whispered, thrusting slowly and gently as our climaxes subsided. “Marry me. Please, please marry me.”
“Right now,” I answered. “Today. I’m your wife, Titus. I’m your everything, always.”
“You mean it? Today. Justice of the peace, today?”
“You, me, and Isabela. Today.”
I felt something wet drop onto my back—his tears. I pulled forward, stood up, turned in his arms and kissed his chest, his cheeks, his tears. “What is it, Titus?”
“I just…” He let me kiss his tears away, didn’t try to hide them, didn’t act ashamed of them. “I’ve never belonged to anyone. Never…never thought I could have this. Have a life like what we’re building. That I could have…a wife. Children. A future.” He touched his forehead to mine. “I always thought I’d die like Tommy.”
“Not happening. I won’t let it.”
“Promise?”
I kissed and kissed and kissed him. “Promise. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and our future is here, together, with Isabela and the little one I’m hoping you put in me, either last night or this morning.”
“Aren’t you on birth control?”
I laughed. “Yeah, but a girl can hope this will the one percent chance that it fails.”
He cackled, sniffled, and laughed again. “Never hoped for that before.”
“I’m going to go off the birth control. It’ll take a few months before we have any real chance of conceiving. Unless you’d rather wait.”
“No. I want it all. I’m not scared of it. Any of it.”
I led him into the shower, and we were wreathed in steam. “Wash me off and feed me, husband.”
“Did you know I make killer pancakes?” he asked, running a bar of soap over my breasts.
“I did not. You’ll have to show me.”
“Don’t we need the certificate to be husband and wife?” he asked.
I shrugged. “A technicality. I’m your wife right now because I want to be. The certificate just makes it formal and legal. The real marriage is when you decide that’s what you want. And I want, so therefore, I declare myself your wifey.”
He laughed, continuing to soap me up, more out of the desire to caress my naked curves than to actually do any cleaning. “Well then, wifey, I guess by that logic that makes me your…what’s the husband equivalent of wifey? I don’t even know.”
“Hubby,” I answered.
“Hubby. Huh. Okay. I hereby declare myself to be your hubby. Now and forever.”
I took the soap from him and washed his manhood. “Now rinse it off good so I can show you how excited I am to be your wife…with my mouth.”
He growled as I dropped to my knees. “Have I ever mentioned how much I love the way you think?”
“You may have, once or twice.”
A pause. “Oh, shit, Laurel. Your mouth feels so fucking good.”
I was totally focused on the enjoyable job at hand—or, rather, mouth—and had him thrusting into my mouth and groaning, when—
“Why are you in the shower together?” a small, sleepy, confused voice said. “What are you doing?”
With a shriek, I fell backward to my ass on the wet marble, turned and saw Isabela in the doorway of the bathroom—or, rather, a faint outline of a small figure just barely visible through the swirling fog, which I hoped also helped disguise us, somewhat. “I thought you locked the door last night,” I muttered, standing up.
“I thought I did too,” he answered. “Hey, uh…we’re just…uh…saving water. By, um, taking a shower at the same time.”
A pause. “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m hungry.”
“Give us a minute, and we’ll be right out,” he answered. “You like pancakes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, well, let us finish getting clean and then you can help me make pancakes. I’ll even show you my secret ingredient.”
“Okay.” A second later, the bathroom door closed with a click.
When she was gone, I laughed. “Well that was unfortunate timing.”
A laugh. “No kidding.” A groan as we finished cleaning up. “So I guess that’s what being a parent is like, huh? Ill-timed interruptions?”
“I guess so,” I muttered. “Now…where was I?”
“Laurel, you don’t have to…oh god. Well—I guess maybe you do. Fuck, fuck yeah, you do.”
“Just be quick about finishing,” I muttered, picking up where I’d left off.
“With the way your mouth feels, that’s easier than I’d like.”
When I’d drained him of every last drop and was wiping the last smears of him off my lips, I stood up and we made quick work of washing off. Titus shampooed his hair, rinsed it, and palmed my ass as he tugged me against him for a quick kiss. “Take your time finishing up. I’ll get breakfast started.”
“You sure? She may have questions.”
“What should I say, if she does?” A laugh as his voice went falsetto. “‘Why was Laurel on her knees, and what was she doing to your bathing suit area?’”
A shrug and a laugh as I doused my hair under the spray. “I dunno. Maybe just distract her so she doesn’t realize you didn’t answer the question?”
A nod as he stepped out and grabbed a towel off the rack. “I like that plan—don’t answer the question and distract. Hey, just like politics.”
I laughed as I began rubbing shampoo into my hair from the ends upward. “Exactly.”
He finished drying off and peeked his head back into the shower. “Hey—you’re amazing and I’m in love with you. In case that didn’t get communicated clearly enough.”
I smiled in the direction of his voice without opening my eyes—I was rinsing the shampoo out. “I know, you too, and you too.” I laughed at his grunt of annoyance at my nonanswer. “Go make pancakes, Titus. I love you.”
16
Titus, Isabela, and I exited the county courthouse, Isabela between Titus and me, her hands in ours. Titus and I were legally married before the judge and the court-appointed witness, and I’d begun the process of filing to have my name legally changed to Laurel Bright. We’d decided to wait a few months, in the end, just to finish the process of settling in and getting to know Isabela more.
She was, we discovered, a precocious, adorable, curious, funny little girl with a mischievous streak a country mile wide. She was an early riser, a ravenous eater, and far too insightful for her own good. Or rather, for ours. Every time we turned around, she was up to something else—trying to make her own breakfast and making a godawful mess, or “helping” with the laundry and adding way too much detergent, or bringing a garter snake inside from the backyard and playing with it in her room without telling anyone.
We brought her to therapy once a week. I continued seeing Dr. Hines, but the sessions were reduced from twice a week to twice a month. After Isabela’s therapy sessions, we always went to get ice cream together.
Business was good, life was good, being with Titus was better than good. We got to make love every night—and, as the weeks slid by, we discovered the benefits of morning sex over night sex, because keeping track of the whirlwind that was Isabela was a full-time job for both of us and we were usually wiped out by the day’s end.
Titus was still doing pop-ups all over the country, but he worked the dates out ahead of time so Isabela and I could attend, and watch him from the side of the stage.
As the weeks slid by faster and faster, I watched Isabela fall in love with Titus every bit as much as I had. She and I were slower to find emotional bonding, but as she learned I wasn’t setting out to try to replace her mom, she began to warm up to me, and to accept me.
It was all a slow process, and we didn’t rush it.
Thus, it was almost three months after we all moved in together that we made our trip to the courthouse. Isabela was happy to be included, and so we stood together in front of the judge and were married, with Isabela between us, smiling as she looked on from Titus to me to the judge and back.
When it was done and Titus and I were husband and wife, Titus lifted Isabela in his arms—she’d recently begun allowing him to pick her up.
“Hey, Monkey.” He’d picked that pet name for her, and she’d run with it, often doing her best monkey impression whenever he said it. “So. Laurel and I are married. You know what that means?”
She shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”
“It means Laurel is your stepmother.”
She blinked at me for a long moment, which I’d come to learn meant something unexpected was about to come out of her mouth. “Are you gonna make me sleep in the attic with the mices?”
I laughed, and did my best old crone cackle. “Yes, my pretty. To the attic with you, and your little mice too,” and I ticked her.
She laughed and crawled around to hang on to Titus’s back, out of reach. “No tickling!”
I reached for her, and to my shock, she let me take her and settle her on my belly, holding her in a hug, face to face. “You’re my little monkey too, Isa-belly.” That was my nickname for her, and the first time she’d answered to it without correcting me, I’d been overjoyed. I held her gaze, serious, now. “I know I’m not your mom. I’m never going to try to take her place because no one ever can, so just remember that, okay? But I do love you. As much as any person can love another person. And I’ll just be Laurel to you, okay? But if you ever wanted to call me…any—um. Anything else besides Laurel, you can. Okay?”
Beside me, I heard Titus swallow hard.
Isabela nodded. “Okay.” She stayed in my arms, but looked at Titus. “Could I call you Daddy?”
Titus blinked hard, cleared his throat. “Y-yeah, Monkey. You can. I would be honored if you called me Daddy.”
“Okay.” She patted me on top of my head with a look in her eyes that was far too knowing and aware for her age. “Don’t worry, I’ll get there with you too.” She booped my nose, hard enough that I wrinkled my nose and forehead in surprise. “I love you as much as any person can love any person, Laur-la.” That was her nickname for me, born out of a slip of the tongue that had stuck.
I was stunned breathless. “You do?”
She smiled. Despite being only six years old, she sometimes seemed wiser than me. “Yup, I do.” A thoughtful pause. “I know! I could call you…Mom-la. Like Laur-la, but Mom-la.”
“Mom-la,” I whispered. I felt a tear drip down my cheek. “I would really like that, Isabela. So, so much.”
She frowned at me. Touched the tear, then looked at her wet fingertip. “Why you cryin’? I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am. Sometimes adults cry when they’re so happy they don’t know how else to show it.”
“Oh. That’s weird. Crying is for sad.”
I laughed through tears. “Yeah, I know. Adults are weird.”
She looked at us each, then wiggled to get down. “So when do we have the party?”
“Tonight,” Titus answered. “Remember when we first moved into the house, how everyone came over? It’s gonna be like that, only all we have to do is have fun. There’s gonna be an ice cream truck, and tacos, and pizza, and a friend of mine is going to play some cool music, and there’s a bouncy castle. The biggest, coolest, most badass bouncy castle Jeremy could find. And trust me, Jeremy can find the coolest stuff.”
“Ice cream truck and a bouncy castle?” She started to bounce on her tiptoes, as if she could feel the bouncy castle under her feet at that very moment. “Will there be other kids to play with?”
“Jeremy and Bex’s kids will all be there,” Titus answered.
“Yay! They’re so fun. When I had a sleepover at their house, Jeremy made a big fort out of blankets in their living room and we watched Disney movies on their big iPad and we got to sleep in the fort with sleeping bags and everything. Violet wrecked it in the middle of the night, though, and it fell on us and we couldn’t see nothing, and Jeremy had to fix it and he said bad words, and Bex got mad at him for saying bad words, but she said the same bad words to him.” A pause. “Adults are funny.” As if that explained the whole thing.
Which, I suppose, it did.
That sleepover had been great for us, too…for slightly different reasons, though; we’d also taken a turn watching Jeremy and Bex’s kids so they could get a night alone, which was something that was rare indeed for them. The next day when they came to pick up the kids, Jeremy had been positively glowing, vibrating with happiness, and I presumed their night had been a success. For us, that many kids had been slightly overwhelming, but with Manny to help, it had gone as smoothly as five kids under the watch of newbie parents could be expected.
“So.” Isabela looked from Titus to me. “Now what?”
“Now?” We were at our new family car—a Porsche Panamera, upon the recommendation of Lizzy; Titus was buckling Isabela into her seat, and his nimble fingers made quick work of the five-point harness. “Now, we go to the mall and buy you anything you want.”
She squealed and kicked her feet. “Shopping! My favorite!”
Titus laughed, pointing at me. “I blame you for that.”
I shrugged. “Shopping is my true talent, so I’ll take the blame.”
“Wait, so you guys get married, and I get presents?” Isabela asked. “I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I like it.”
“I don’t know if it makes any sense either,” Titus said, “but I like it too.”
When we got to the mall, I quickly discovered that when Titus said anything, he really, truly meant anything at all. He ended up having to get Jeremy to swing by the mall with his truck to haul the insane amount of things he’d bought his—our—daughter. Dollhouses, doll clothes, doll cars, dolls, clothes for Isabela, more than could be quantified.
On the way home, Isabela was quiet. “Ti—Daddy?”
Titus’s face lit up like a neon sign when she corrected herself. “Yeah, Monkey.”
“I want to give the stuff I got to someone else.”
“What? Why?”
She shrugged, was quiet for a while. “I mean, I want the clothes, and maybe one doll. But…when…when I stayed with Miss Mena, before I came to live with you, after…after Mommy…” she trailed off, unable to say it, or to find the right way to say it.
“Passed away?” Titus suggested.
“Yeah, after that. Miss Mena told me about her job. She said her job was to help kids who didn’t have no one to take good care of them. Like me, before I went with you. If I didn’t have you and Mom-la, Miss Mena told me I would’ve had to go stay with other people. And she told me when kids go stay with those other people who aren’t their all the time parents, I forget the word, that they don’t have stuff. Like toys to play with, or nothing. And I got lots of toys to play with already, and I was thinking about how some of those kids don’t got anything, and I was thinking maybe we could get Miss Mena to help us find kids to give it to.”
“You are a remarkable young lady, Miss Isabela Hernandez,” Titus said, sound choked up. “You truly amaze me. I think that would be a wonderful thing to do.”
“I still want to keep the clothes and maybe one of the dollies,” she said, sounding hesitant. “But not everything.”
“It’s absolutely up to you what you keep, honey,” Titus said. “We bought all that for you, because we love you. And it’s yours do whatever you want with.”
“Okay.”
Two hours later, we were following Mena down a side street in a not-great part of suburban LA, with Jeremy behind us in the big red truck, the bed of which was full to overflowing toys that Isabela had decided to give away, supplemented with more stuff Jeremy and Bex’s kids had decided they didn�
��t need anymore. Not just the bed of the truck, either, but a whole flat-bed trailer of the type used by landscapers—Jeremy had made a few calls and gotten some friends to kick in even more.
Mena immediately had a list of recipients, and we were on our way to the first stop. We pulled up and gathered around the truck and trailer.
“Okay, so this house has two little girls, sisters,” Mena said, mainly to Isabela. “They’re about your age. Why don’t you pick three things for each girl. Do you know how many that would be?”
Isabela counted to three, and then three more. “Six?”
“Wow, you are so smart!” Mena exclaimed. “Good job. This is your plan, so I want you to help me give the toys to them.”
Isabela looked equal parts nervous and excited. “What should I say?”
Mena thought a moment. “Tell them…it’s extra Christmas.”
“I love Christmas!” Isabela said. A frown flitted across her features—probably the realization that the next Christmas would be her first without her mother, but she rallied with admirable swiftness. “Extra Christmas.”
Titus lifted her up to the bed of the truck, and she picked out two dolls, two packages of doll clothes, a collection of Little Golden Books, and a big pink Jeep for the dolls.
Titus and I watched as Isabela and Mena carried the items in question up to the front door, and Mena rang the doorbell. A moment passed, and then the door opened, revealing a young Hispanic woman with two small black girls peeking out around her legs, their hair in box braids with colorful beads on the ends. We could hear a word here and there, and then the excited squeals of the girls as they realized what was happening, and that it was really happening.
Isabela came back glowing, chattering. “Daddy, Mom-la! That’s even more fun than getting presents for me. They were so excited!”
Mena watched Isabela chatter excitedly. “Mom-la?” she said to me, in a quiet murmur while Titus crouched and listened to Isabela.
I smiled. “It started when she tried to say my name but it came out ‘Laur-la,’ and then earlier this morning after Titus and I got married, she asked Titus if she could call him Daddy, and then I think she realized that might’ve hurt my feelings so she called me Mom-la.”
Laurel's Bright Idea (Billionaire Baby Club Book 3) Page 26