by Amie Knight
She was just starting to give little smiles that I couldn’t quite decide whether it was gas or the actual real deal. Her mouth curved into one of those smiles and I realized she must be really smiling nowadays.
“Did you see this, little bit? She smiled!” he exclaimed over his shoulder.
I came up behind him and put my arm around him. “I did. She’s growing so fast.”
He changed her diaper and cooed at her and gave her a feeding, recording everything in the book.
He was completely enamored with Hope, so helplessly in love with her, I couldn’t even be mad that he’d failed to notice my sexy mom clothes. I heated him up a plate of leftover food in the microwave and told myself I’d try another time. Maybe a day when he was off work.
He sat on the couch with Hope and baby talked to her while she stared up at him like he hung the moon and I guess to her he probably did. They did this every night and every damn time I’d feel the familiar sting of tears in my eyes. She didn’t understand all he’d done for her. For us. How Doc might not have done the surgery that saved her life, but he’d made sure her momma was safe. Made it possible for her to have the best doctors at no expense. He was the reason she was here and as healthy as she could be.
One day, she’d realize and it probably wouldn’t make a lick of difference because I knew, she’d already think the world of him. He’d stepped into the role of Dad like he was born for it.
He never said the words, daddy or dad, and I didn’t either. I was too scared of the pressure it might put on him. After all, those were big words, meaningful ones. I wanted him to be absolutely sure he was in this for the long haul before saddling him with the responsibilities that came with the word father. That didn’t stop me from thinking them, though. It didn’t stop me from daydreaming. It didn’t stop my thoughts from wandering to the future where I saw Doc teaching Hope to ride her bike for the first time or them on the way to her first daddy daughter dance, her in a frilly pink dress, him in a pale pink bow tie to match. Oh, I was full of fantasies.
The evenings were all the same. He’d come home and gently lift her from her crib and say, “Hey, Hope, it’s me. Your Doc, I’m home.” I wondered if ten years from now he’d still come home and say those same words, only she’d be healthy and climb up in his lap and wrap her arms around his neck.
And Lord have mercy. If I thought my sweet man couldn’t get sweeter I was wrong, because there was nothing in the world more pure and good than Doc and Hope together. They were it for me, those two.
“Your food will get cold,” I called from the kitchen and his answer was the same as it was every night.
“It’s okay. I’ll just hold her a bit longer. I don’t mind if it’s cold.”
And I did what I did every night and put tin foil over it and stuck it back in the warm oven. I had to admit, if you’d asked me ten years ago about being a stay-at-home mom, I would’ve laughed in your face. I’d wanted the fast life then, but I was realizing the slow life was sometimes richer. I wouldn’t have traded a day of stardom for a minute of being able to stay home with Hope and care for her.
The doorbell rang and my eyes shot to his. “Your mom coming by?”
He smirked as he carried Hope to the door.
Lucy came in like she always did, like a damn hurricane, chatting, boisterous, and loud, before she took Hope from Anthony.
“Give me that sweet baby.” She cradled Hope to her chest and kissed the top of her head. I never felt so lucky as I did when I saw Hope with Doc and his mother. Our family had grown leaps and bounds over the last several weeks.
I leaned over the baby and kissed Lucy on the cheek. “To what do we owe this visit?”
Anthony interrupted. “I asked her to come by and keep the baby so we could go out for a bit.”
That was a great idea. I would’ve loved to go out with Doc and have an evening to ourselves, but hell no, I wasn’t leaving my sick baby, even for a couple hours.
Shaking my head, I said, “That’s not a good idea. Something could happen while we’re gone.” I was completely fine with us having a date night in. Leaving the baby and going out on the town was absolutely out of the question.
Pulling my body into the front of his and wrapping his arms around me, he whispered, “I thought we’d take a few hours up two floors in your old apartment.”
I raised my eyebrows. Maybe he had noticed my booty shorts. I wanted the sexy time, but I still wasn’t convinced leaving Hope was a good idea. “I don’t know, Doc. Anything could go wrong.”
He kissed my lips softy. “And we’d only be two minutes away and Mom would call immediately if anything did.” He kissed me again. “Come on, baby. You deserve a night off.”
I smiled up at him. “Well, I did brush my hair today.”
He ran a hand through my strands. “You always look beautiful.”
“Okay, okay. You wore me down with your flattery.” My eyes shot to Lucy. “But you call right away if anything is even a little off.”
“Of course,” she said, not looking at me at all but smiling down at Hope.
“Come on, gorgeous. Let’s get you upstairs,” Doc said, motioning me to the door, meanwhile all I could think was ‘come on, let’s get you naked.’
I called over my shoulder, “Seriously, call me if anything happens.”
“Yes, yes.” Lucy waved me away. “I get it, now go and have fun.”
We rode the elevator the two floors up while I rocked on the balls of my feet and eyed Doc’s red bow tie. I was going to rip it off with my teeth.
Anthony unlocked the door to the apartment and I’d never been more thankful his friend was going to be gone for a couple more months still. Maybe we could sneak away every now and then when the moms were around.
I walked into the room and smiled. My Doc. He was trying to romance me. Rose petals covered the floor in a path that led to a bottle of champagne chilling and more roses that led to the bedroom.
He didn’t know I didn’t need romancing. I wanted to jump him right now. Roses and champagne wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
He poured the champagne while I hugged him, my chest to his back, my hands roaming the large expanse of his chest. I would’ve kissed his neck, but I couldn’t reach it. The man was a giant. God, he felt good.
He turned and planted a long kiss on the top of my head before handing me a glass of bubbly. I smiled up at him as I sipped. I’d just have a little. I wouldn’t overindulge. I always had to be ready for anything when it came to Hope, like surprise trips to the emergency room.
Grabbing my hand, he pulled me from the dining room and through the bedroom straight to the big bathtub I’d enjoyed when I first moved in. It was full of steaming water, bubbles, and more rose petals.
This man. He’d planned this for me. He must have come here straight from work.
“Kiss me, Doc,” I whispered.
His lips pressed softly to mine. A quick, sweet kiss when I wanted raw, primal, barbaric.
“Take a bath, baby. Relax for a while.” He took my champagne glass from me and set it on the edge of the tub and started to walk out of the room.
Where the hell was he going?
“Wait,” I probably yelled a little crazily because I was feeling insane or sexually deprived, whatever you wanted to call it. “You aren’t getting in with me?”
I mean, it would be a tight fit with Doc’s size, but I was more than willing to take one for the team and squeeze my ass in that tub with him.
He smiled. “Baby, tonight is all about you. I wanted to give you a baby free night, where you could take a few hours for yourself.”
But I didn’t want a hot bath and champagne! I wanted the D! It had never occurred to me until that moment. I wasn’t an insecure type of girl. But maybe he didn’t want me anymore. Maybe he didn’t find me attractive. He had delivered a baby for me and seen everything. And when I said everything I meant everything.
I looked at the bath water, the bubbles and pe
tals floating on the top, and realized he wasn’t romancing me. He was just giving me a night off. I was an idiot. I wasn’t getting laid. I was getting a nap.
My face fell with the realization that maybe Doc hadn’t put the moves on me because he just wasn’t interested anymore.
“What’s wrong?” He came to stand in front of me while I wracked my brain trying to figure out exactly what about me he didn’t like anymore.
“Is it the weight?”
The small line between his eyebrows creased. “What?”
“I know I’ve gained a little weight and the stretch marks aren’t that hot—”
He cut me off, crowding me into the wall behind me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I…I,” I stuttered, feeling like maybe I’d said something wrong because Doc was looking especially primal at the moment.
My back hit the wall and Doc’s front hit the front of mine. He looked down at me like he wanted to eat me alive. “You think I don’t want you?”
Reaching behind my neck, he wrapped his large hand around it firmly. “You don’t think I think about being inside of you, putting my mouth on you, tasting every inch of you every fucking moment of every day?”
Holy shit. I was so unprepared for this. And he was serious as a heart attack. I squeaked out a, “Maybe?”
He laughed sarcastically. “Fucking maybe, she says.”
He used my neck to guide me toward the bathroom door and into the bedroom. “Get on the fucking bed, Kelly, and I’ll show you just how much I don’t want you.”
Oh, he was pissed at me, I thought. He was scarily sexy in that moment. I didn’t know whether to get naked or run for my life. “But…”
“Get on the fucking bed, shortcake.” He gave me a filthy dirty smile that instantly made my panties soaking wet. “Doctor’s orders.”
I was getting the D! Finally! Only, if he did want me, how come he hadn’t put the moves on me before now? I was a question girl and Anthony had the answers, so I couldn’t stop myself as I stepped out of my booty shorts and down to my black sexy panties I’d worn especially just for the occasion.
“If you want me, then why haven’t you taken me?”
“Less talking, more getting naked,” he growled at me while pulling my top over my head.
“But why?” I shouted.
“Jesus, you’ve always asked too many damn questions.”
I grinned. “You like it.”
“I love it.” He came around behind me and unfastened my bra before moving my body to the bed with his. He placed his hand in the center of my back and pushed me down on the bed until I was bent over, face in the comforter, ass in the air.
His knees hit the floor and I felt his smooth hands at the sides of my underwear, sliding them down and past my legs and off. “How could you think for one second that I don’t want you?”
I felt his hot breath near my ass cheek before the sharp bite of teeth. Fuck. No one had ever bitten my ass before. And, God, I liked it. I wiggled under his ministrations, wanting more.
“I feel like there wasn’t a time in my life that I didn’t want you. I was giving you time. I didn’t know if you were ready, but I’ve been ready. I was ready ten years ago and I know I fucked it all up but, I’m ready now. And I don’t know if I’ve made this clear to you, but you’re the love of my life, so my guess is I’ll never not want you, baby. You understand?”
I groaned into the comforter.
He bit my other ass cheek and chuckled before rubbing his hands over both globes. “Seems like you’re getting it now. Now, up on your knees.” He pushed my legs up and under me until my ass really was up in the air now. Pulling my legs apart, he growled low. “Fuck, you’re so wet for me already.”
He brushed one finger over my clit lightly and grunted. I thought he’d touch me more there, maybe slide a finger inside, but of course he loved to surprise me. The man was full of fucking surprises, so I shouldn’t have been so shocked when his hands gripped my hips harshly, separating my folds, and pulled me back onto his face where he lashed his tongue against my clit. But I damn sure was.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, God,” I moaned while he sucked my clit into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it before slipping it up to my entrance.
“I’ve been thinking about tasting you since that day in the kitchen against the fridge. I wanted to drop to my knees right there and fuck you with my tongue,” he said against my slit. He bit my thigh and I cried out. “But you were too eager. You couldn’t wait, so I let you ride my cock instead. Did that feel good, baby?”
Oh, God, I’d almost forgotten how filthy the man could talk. Doc could go from sweet to dirty in point five seconds in the sack. I was so glad he’d reminded me. His words alone could make a girl come.
“You almost made me come in my pants like a goddamn teenager.”
I could feel him stand up behind me as he gripped my ass in his hands. “I’d really like to take you just like this from behind with your ass in my hands, but I think I’d like it even more to see your face when you come.”
And then I was flipped over and onto my back, knees spread with my blond Greek god standing between them. I watched as he pulled at the red tie that for some reason I thought I’d remove with my teeth. I should have known he’d be running the show. He was slow removing his shirt and then belt. His eyes danced down at me like he knew I loved watching him get undressed and he held my gaze as he pushed his pants and underwear down past his heavy erection. Standing up, he reached between his legs and wrapped his hand around the length of his cock, giving it a few tugs that had my face burning hot and my body on fire. Fuck, but he was gorgeous. Even better than I remembered from our younger days. His body was more defined, bigger, and broader, a little hairier. His cock just as exquisite as I remembered it. The years had been fucking amazing to Doc.
He moved closer to the bed between my legs and stared down at my body, his gaze burning across my breasts down to my stomach where my hands seemed to move of their own accord. The stretch marks, the small bit of extra baby weight that I just couldn’t shake; I didn’t want him to see it.
He grabbed them in his own. “No, baby. You don’t cover yourself from me ever. I love every bit of you. Especially this part,” he said, moving my hands aside and touching my belly. “This is where the proof that you carried the other love of my life is. Don’t you dare hide it from me.”
And that was all it took for tears to fill my eyes.
He leaned down and kissed the small slope of my stomach. “Every bit of you is beautiful,” he whispered against the skin there. “But this part, it’s especially gorgeous.”
He kissed the spot below my belly button, above it and to the sides before moving up my body and to my chest with the kind of excruciating slowness that could drive any woman wild, especially one who hadn’t had sex in almost a year.
“Please,” I begged as he licked up the center of my chest like we had all the time in the world.
“You never have to beg, baby. You just tell me what you want and it’s all yours,” he growled out as he drew one of my nipples into his mouth and sucked hard while pinching the other between his fingers, teasing me mercilessly.
“Oh, God, please. Please.”
He squeezed my breasts together and alternated nipples, biting, sucking, licking, driving me completely wild. He smiled up at me from my chest. “I’ve been dreaming about these for ten long fucking years. Don’t rush me.”
But it didn’t take long for him to become impatient, too. “God, I need to be inside you.” He ground his pelvis against mine. His cock ran up and down the wet length of me as I wiggled beneath him, anxious for him to fill me up.
Kneeling up and away from me, he grabbed his pants from the floor, removing his wallet and then a silver packet.
He rolled the condom on slowly and breathed heavily. I got the impression he was trying to rein himself in as he settled over me. Positioning himself at my entrance, he kissed me slowly, sweetly b
efore pushing in delicately like I was something fragile.
A deep, growly groan slipped past his lips and into the air around us when he was fully seated. He laid his forehead against my chest, breathing deeply before lifting his head and gazing into my eyes.
His elbows planted on either side of my head, he cradled my jaw in that way he always did, his thumbs meeting right in the middle of my chin. “Okay?”
A small blip in my heart, like it skipped a beat because of this man’s pure goodness. I smiled up at him. “I’m okay.” I was better than okay. I was in love with the best man I’d ever known. And he loved me, too. He was the type of man who could love a child who wasn’t genetically his own. He was the type of man who came home after twelve hours of work and never complained about caring for said child. He was the type of man who asked the woman he loved if she was okay while he was making love to her because he never wanted to hurt her. Yeah, I was better than okay. I was wonderful.
His eyes gazing down at me said it all, but it didn’t matter, his lips did, too. “I love you, little bit.”
Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes and onto the bedding beneath me. “I know,” I whispered, leaning up to capture his lips with my own. “I love you, too,” I said across them.
And he held my face and kissed me again while he moved inside of me, slowly, leisurely, painstakingly unhurried. I gasped into his mouth and he moaned into mine. I met his every thrust with one of my own. We were heated flesh to heated flesh, sweat slicked skin to sweat slicked skin, thundering heart to thundering heart.
And when I was close, his lips pressed to my ear, his hands still holding my face. “You’re close, aren’t you? I can feel how tight you are around me. Are you going to come on my cock? You are, aren’t you?”
And just like that his dirty words sent me over the edge and flying apart.
“That’s it. Give it to me. Give me everything. I want it all.” His hands tightened on my face as he picked up speed, thrusting into me harshly. “Fuck, I’m coming,” he grunted above me, his eyes still eating me up.
Three more long hard thrusts inside of me and he stilled above me, dropping his forehead to mine, panting like he’d run a marathon.