by Leslie North
Her voice trailed off when he circled a thumb teasingly around her clit. “You’re going to what, Carolina? Come?”
The muscles in her body tensed at the word. Coming from his mouth, it was sensual and sexy. Spreading her hands over the coverlet under her, she panted and closed her eyes. He continued to move his finger slowly in and out of her, but when he flicked his thumb over her clit, she completely fell apart. Her thighs quivered, and she moaned as the orgasm ripped through her.
“Fuck, Carolina,” he moaned. “I think that was the sexiest thing I have ever seen.”
“If you’re done playing with me, I’ll show you something even sexier,” she said breathily. “Please fuck me, Nathan. I need to feel you inside me. What do I need to do? Beg? Wrap my mouth around your cock and…”
His mouth covered hers, and he reached up to tweak her nipple. When she was too dazed to speak, and soaking wet, he finally lifted his body and shrugged out of his shirt. Carolina licked her lips and watched as he moved off the bed and undid his pants.
Who would have thought that under the sweater vests and Dockers was the most amazing body she’d ever laid eyes on. Hungrily, she took him all in. His muscular pecs. The six-pack abs. The crease of the V on his pelvis that led all the way down to his erection.
She crawled to the edge of bed and pushed herself up to a kneeling position at the edge of the bed. From there, she could reach out to him. Pull him closer. Press her lips to his chest and flick her tongue over his nipple.
And finally wrap her hands around his hardness. He hissed and immediately pumped his hips against her hand. Growling an expletive, he roughly pushed her down and climbed over her.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamed of this,” he muttered hoarsely. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to hers, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Without any more urging, he thrust inside her.
“Fuck! Nathan!” she cried out as he filled her. He didn’t even give her a chance to adjust before he pumped his hips and moved even deeper.
“God, Carolina,” he moaned. “You feel perfect.”
She couldn’t answer as she clawed at his back, desperate to hold on. He fucked her hard and deep, and kissed her just as urgently.
Their bodies grew hot and sweaty and slick as he slid over her. When he reached back and pulled her knee up, he thrust all the way in her and they both cried out.
“Nathan. Fuck. Nathan. Ah God,” she panted.
“Come for me, Carolina. I want to feel you. I need to feel you. Now, Carolina. Now!”
At his command, her whole body quivered, and the orgasm slammed through her. Unable to hold on, she fell limply against the bed, but he wasn’t done. Lifting her body up, he rocked back on his heels until she was impaled on top of him, and only then, did he roar and spill himself inside her.
Carolina wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in the crook of his shoulder. He didn’t say anything as he slowly lowered her to the bed and flipped them over so she sprawled out across his body.
Her pussy pulsed with the aftershocks, and she whimpered softly.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said truthfully. Stretching like a cat, she slid her knees around him and straddled him. His eyebrows went up as she gently scraped her nails down his chest. “You might have created a monster.”
Suddenly, she heard the vibration of her phone. Frowning, she twisted her body until she could reach her phone. Flipping it over, panic hit her gut.
The babysitter had called her three times. Her mother had called twice. “No. Oh no!” she cried out as she climbed off Nathan and called her mom back. There was worry in his eyes when he sat up, but she turned her back on him. If something had happened to her kids while she was fucking Nathan, she would never forgive herself.
“Momma? What’s wrong?”
“Calm down, Carolina. Everyone is fine. Caitlyn was driving the kids back from the movies when a drunk driver hit her. They went to the hospital to get checked out, and everyone is fine.”
Anxiety gripped her heart. “Are you sure? What if something happened that they couldn’t see. There could be internal bleeding or a rupture in one of their organs.”
“Carolina. Stop! I said all that to them. The doctors were very thorough. Carlita is completely fine. Tamara and Julio both hit their heads, but they don’t have concussions. They’ll probably be a little sore tomorrow.”
“All right, I’m coming home. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” She ended the call and reached for her dress.
“Is everything okay?” Nathan said quietly.
After pulling up the straps, she turned to him and frowned. “We both agree that this isn’t anything serious, right? We were just having a good time.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Why?”
“My kids were in a car accident,” she told him, as she grabbed her phone. “Nathan, I can’t do this. I can’t work in the restaurant, take care of my kids and play around with you. Tonight was absolutely amazing, but it can’t happen again.”
He didn’t say anything when she unlocked the door and raced down the stairs. By the time she grabbed her keys from her purse and was out to her car, she was ready to cry.
Pressing a hand against her abdomen, she gasped and tried to catch her breath. She had no idea what she was feeling. Fear. Guilt.
And a hole that she didn’t even know existed until Nathan came along.
10
Carolina took the next two days off to spend with her kids. While she watched Carlita roll around in the playpen, she held Tamara under one arm and Julio under the other.
“Mom,” Julio whined as he wriggled. “Let me go. I want to go play.”
“In a minute baby,” she whispered. She placed a kiss on the top of his forehead. “The doctor said you might be sore today from the seatbelt. How do you feel?”
“I told you this morning that it doesn’t hurt that bad.”
Tamara leaned across and shot him a dirty look. “Behave, Julio. She got scared.”
“Were you scared?” her son asked with wide eyes. He stopped squirming, and she smiled down at him.
“You’re my baby! Of course I was scared.”
“I’m not a baby, Mom!” her son protested, wrinkling his nose and trying once more to escape her embrace.
“Julio Jesus Valdez, you could be thirty years old, and you would still be my baby.”
Julio wrinkled his nose. “That’s old. I’m not gonna get that old.”
Laughing, Carolina unhooked her arm and watched Julio slide off the couch. She’d barely let her kids out of her sight since the accident. All three of them slept in the bedroom with her, and she’d spent most of the night checking on them.
Making sure, they were still breathing.
It was almost ridiculous. After seeing the damage to the car, she knew the accident was minor, but she couldn’t seem to stop the fear and guilt.
There might have been a time, at one point, when she thought that she could have it all. Great children. A loving husband. The best career. But when she and Carlo called it quits, she knew that something would have to give. Since she already had the children, and she needed the career to feed them, she’d given up men.
Last night wasn’t just a slip. She’d dressed for that party with every intention of seducing Nathan. He woke up her body like no other man, but it was only fun. It didn’t seem harmful. Until she got to thinking about what might have happened, all the while she and Nathan were…
She shook her head. Best not to think about that. In any case, it was over now. Her children were far more important than anything else in her life. So fun would have to go by the wayside.
“Momma, if I say that I’m sore, do I have to go to school tomorrow?” Tamara asked.
Carolina looked at her daughter with wide innocent eyes. “Are you sore? Oh no, that’s terrible! We need to go back to the doctor immediately. And then it will be bed rest and soup for the res
t of the week.”
“Can it be ice cream instead?”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry. Ice cream isn’t for kids who are sore.”
Tamara gasped and shook her head. “No. I’m not sore. I feel great!”
Laughing, Carolina hugged her close and kissed her. “All jokes aside, baby, do you feel okay?”
“I twinge a little bit when I twist like this, but then I’m fine.” Tamara awkwardly maneuvered her body in a strange position, and Carolina shook her head.
“Then I suppose you shouldn’t move like that. Do you want to go outside and play with your brother?”
Tamara nodded and hopped off the couch to run out and join Julio. Walking over to the playpen, Carolina picked up her toddler and hugged her close. Carlita had been well protected in her car seat. She gave Carolina a toothy grin. “Momma!”
Reaching down to make sure that Carlita’s diaper was still dry, she grabbed the blanket and headed for the door. “Today, we’re going to spend some time outside and watch your brother and sister play. How does that sound?”
“No!”
Opening the screen door, she watched as Tamara and Julio ran around the yard playing some imaginary game. Settling the blanket on the ground, she put Carlita in her lap and watched them playing.
“You got scurvy!” Julio yelled as he ran towards Tamara.
“You don’t even know what scurvy is!” Tamara yelled back as she ducked behind some bushes.
“Neither do you!”
They were playing pirates and navy again. As always, Tamara wanted to be the pirates. All of them. There were times when Carolina was concerned that her daughter was going to grow up to be a criminal.
Two months ago, Carlo had let them watch Pirates of the Caribbean. They had nightmares for a week, but afterwards, they begged Carolina to watch it again. When that didn’t work, they started playing pirates and navy, making up their own stories like Carolina and her siblings had done when they were that age.
“God save the Queen!”
Carolina shook her head. She had no idea where Julio picked up these things, but his British accent was hysterical.
She heard the latch to the fence lift, and she immediately grabbed Carlita as the gate opened. When Nathan walked in, she leaned back and sighed.
“Nathan, what are you doing here?”
“I rang the door in the front, but I guess you didn’t hear it. When I heard the call of the British Navy, I had to come around back to make sure everything was okay.” He gave her a sheepish grin, and Julio and Tamara stopped what they were doing. “Ahoy mates!” he called to them.
“It’s the Kraken!” Tamara shrieked, and Julio joined her. Soon they were pointing their imaginary swords at him and running. Nathan was a good sport. He ran slowly around the yard, and when they caught up with him, he went down with a guttural moan.
Once the threat was taken care of, they went back to chasing each other, and Nathan joined her on the blanket. “I hope I’m not interrupting. You didn’t call, and I wanted to make sure the kids were okay.”
“Nathan,” she said softly. “I don’t know how I feel about you popping in on me like this. I meant what I said last night.”
“Does that mean we can’t be friends?”
The look on his face made her melt a little inside, and she scooted over to make room for him. “As you can see, they are all fine. I took off from Maria’s today and tomorrow to spend some time with them. Tamara is already trying to weasel out of going to school tomorrow.”
“She’s a smart kid. I once deliberately got bronchitis to get out of going to school and avoid a math test.”
“That’s extreme. How old were you?”
“Twenty-one.” Unable to help herself, Carolina laughed. Nathan smiled sheepishly. “Daisy was sick that week, and I’d taken the opportunity to hang out with the guys. Thanks to binge drinking and several nasty hangovers, I was woefully unprepared for the test. So, I took Daisy some soup, and hung out with her all day. The next morning my lymph nodes were so swollen that I actually had to go to the doctor.”
“That’s what you get!”
Nathan shrugged. “I aced the make-up test, so it was all worth it.”
“You are such a child!”
Carlita chose that moment to squat and let out a toxic fart. Carolina screwed up her face and held her child out. “Nathan, I am so sorry.”
He fell back in a pretend faint before shaking his head. “What the hell did you feed her?”
“This is not even the worst. I’m going to go change her.” She hesitated a little. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“I can stick around for a little bit.”
Feeling oddly happy, she carried her stinky toddler into the nursery and placed her on the changing table. Carlita had always been a squirmy baby, so changing her diaper was always a workout. Finally, when she got her chatty girl clean and dry, she pulled a new diaper up and her yellow dress down.
“All right, Carlita. What do we think? Is Nathan really here for the kids or is he hoping for round two?”
“No!”
“Some things never change. When you’re a teenager and you ask me for money and a phone and a car and new clothes, I’m going to remind you of your favorite word.”
Disposing of the diaper and the lining on the table, she picked Carlita up and smothered her in kisses. Carlo had been waiting for her at the house last night when she got home. He took a good look at her dress, but he hadn’t said anything to her about where she’d been. Instead, he’d forced her to calm down before she went in.
Of all her husbands, he was the best father. Husband number one took off before the baby was even born. Husband number two was a complete deadbeat. He stuck it out for a few years, but when she realized what kind of man would be raising her children, she left him.
Carlo was different. There was no denying that he was an attractive man, and she was certainly attracted to him. But the attraction never really ignited into anything. They married because they were good together, but he was focused on his work, and she was focused on hers. When she was pregnant with Carlita, she thought that maybe it would bond them together, but after she was born, Carolina knew that things would never change.
He would have stayed with her. She knew that, but it would have been wrong. He didn’t love her anymore, and she didn’t love him. Carlo had begged to stay in her kids’ lives. They called him Daddy, and she couldn’t deny them.
She didn’t need another husband. Her children had a father. Her family was so extensive that they practically had a whole village. She should do more to push Nathan away so she could concentrate on her job and her kids.
As she carried Carlita down the stairs, she made the decision to tell Nathan to leave.
But when she saw him sitting on the blanket with her kids and building things out of sticks and leaves, she couldn’t help but smile.
Maybe he could stick around a little bit longer.
As usual, Tuesday morning was rough. Tamara decided to play a prank on her brother and hid his backpack. After threatening and bribing her for the location, Carolina finally found it in the cat carrier.
They hadn’t had a cat in three years.
Grumbling, she packed it with his lunch and glared at Tamara when she came into the kitchen. “We are going to talk about this when you get home from school, so don’t even think about asking to go to Michelle’s house.”
Her lower lip quivered. “I’m sorry, Momma. I wanted to have a little fun.”
“There is a time and a place! Get Carlita in her stroller so we’re not late,” Carolina snapped. Tamara silently did as she was told, and they made it to the bus stop as the bus was pulling up.
Giving Tamara and Julio a kiss, she waited until the bus rolled away before jogging back down to her car. “Baby, we are going to be late.”
After settling Carlita in the car seat and folding up the stroller, she pushed her hair out of her face and slid in the car. R
eaching into the car, she pulled out her coffee thermos and set it in the cup holder.
When she finally pulled up to Bonita’s house, she was twenty minutes late. The chefs would be at the restaurant in ten minutes, and Carolina had none of her paperwork finished.
Snagging her cup of coffee, she went to take a sip when the thermos slipped out of her hands. As the lukewarm liquid spilled all over her clothes, she gasped and jumped. Her hand hit the car horn, and as it blared, Carlita started to scream and cry.
“Shit!” Carolina yelled. Taking a few deep breaths, she managed to get out of the car without any more accidents. A rapidly-spreading coffee stain covered the front of her white blouse and dripped down her gray skirt. She was already on the verge of tears, but Carlita was calming down, so Carolina took a few deep breaths before taking her toddler out of the car.
There were no more incidents as she pulled into the employee restaurant parking lot. With her head down, she hurried across the brick road and pulled out her budget report. She would need to make the morning deposit before doing anything else.
As she walked up to her restaurant, she stopped short. Yellow caution tape covered the doors of the building and several business owners stood out front.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Carolina muttered as she hurried forward. “We were still supposed to have a couple of months! What happened?”
“The building inspector was here this morning to look at the standing structures. He condemned it.”
“Condemned!” Carolina’s face fell as she stared at the crumbling brick. “So it’s a little old and could use a little love. But to condemn it? Really?” A knot formed in her stomach when she realized the reality of her situation.
“Yeah. Mr. Wells is supposed to be here soon to let us in so we can get our money and personal items. He’s giving us until the weekend to move out our inventory.”
“That’s just great.” Carolina was going to have to call her staff and tell them they didn’t have a job because she hadn’t been able to find another place that came anywhere near satisfying her mother.
Then she was going to have to tell Maria that she didn’t have a restaurant anymore. Tears formed in her eyes, and she rubbed her hands together. How had this happened? She was always so prepared, and yet she knew that this day was coming.