Before he does anything else, he reaches out to fumble in the bedside drawer. He takes out a condom, but I push his hand away, biting my lip. Flora is the best thing to ever happen to me. And I can’t imagine fucking the father of my child with anything between us.
“I think we’re long past that, aren’t we, Hunter?” I point out gently.
With a grunt of agreement, he drops the condom and leans to kiss me on the forehead before rearing back. I watch with bated breath as he slowly, gradually slides his thick cock inside my aching cunny. With every centimeter, I tremble and moan. It’s almost too much. I thought his fingers felt better than anything in the world, but this? There’s nothing that can compare to Hunter’s cock stretching out my tight little hole, slipping down so deep as to brush against my g-spot without even trying.
“Fuck, Blossom,” he snarls between gritted teeth. “I’ve missed this.”
“Promise me one thing,” I murmur breathlessly.
“Anything, angel,” Hunter says.
“Promise me...you won’t hold back,” I beg him.
It’s like I’ve said the magic words, because immediately, Hunter pulls back and spears into me so hard I see stars. I cry out as his cock slides in and out of my twitching pussy, slamming into that delicious place deep within, my own slickness dripping down everywhere. He bends forward, crunching my body so that my ankles are nearly around his neck, he’s plunging so deeply into me. It feels like he could touch my cervix, he’s pounding so hard and fast. Both of us are panting and groaning, clinging to each other for dear life while we fuck hard, making up for lost time with every powerful thrust. I roll my hips up to meet each stroke, clenching my pussy around his thick shaft, bringing us both closer and closer to orgasm.
“You feel so good, baby,” he snarls in my ear. His hot breath tickles my neck and gives me goosebumps, as well as a thrill of pure pleasure that connects down to my pussy. His hand reaches around to smack my ass hard while he fucks me, the two of us moving and gasping like wild animals in heat, like we can’t help ourselves. There’s no doubt about it now: we’re just as desperately hot for each other tonight as we ever were five years ago. In fact, it’s almost like the absence has stoked our fire. I would sooner die than slow down now.
“Harder,” I breathe. “Make it hurt.”
Hunter grunts and picks up the pace, an intense, dark expression on his face as he takes my permission to lose control. He’s not holding back. He’s done restraining whatever wild demon is inside him, so insatiable for my sweet, tight pussy. Hunter grabs my hips so hard I know it’ll leave bruises, and that only turns me on even more as he fucks me wildly. We’re so close now, both of us gasping in tandem, and then finally-- we’re there.
Just as the most powerful climax rips through my body, Hunter dives forward to capture my cry with a kiss, and his cock pumps hot, precious seed deep inside me, filling me up, making me his own. I belong to him now: mind, body, and soul. I know now that nothing-- not time, not space, not bad luck, not good nor evil can break us apart again. Come what may, I belong with Hunter, and he belongs with me.
We come down from the shared high slowly, breathing heavily and kissing each other’s faces as our bodies start to go limp. I ache all over in the best possible way, and I can’t wait to examine my bruises and marks later. Hunter collapses down next to me with a sigh, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek sweetly. I smile and nuzzle closer, wanting to stay like this forever. But I’ve had a child, so my ability to, well, resist the urge to go has been significantly decreased. So I settle for a kiss to the tip of Hunter’s nose, and then I slide out of bed.
Wrapping a sheet around my body, I tell him quietly, “I’ll be back. Bathroom.”
Hunter nods sleepily, watching me leave. I shuffle down the hallway as silently as I can, not wanting to wake Sage or Flora on the way. I find the bathroom, a little wood-paneled room with a rain shower and a surprisingly wide window. At first, having lived in the city for years now, the sight of a window in a bathroom makes me uneasy. What if someone could see right in? But then I remind myself that this is the middle of nowhere. All I can see through the thin, lightly fluttering, sheer curtains is a strangely familiar but stationary shape. I’m so intrigued that I go to check the window before even going to pee. I part the curtains ever so slightly to look outside, and when my eyes fall on the familiar form, my heart plummets.
Right outside, in full view of the bathroom window, is a gorgeous white lilac tree, almost glowing under the eerie light of the moon.
Hunter
“What do you think, chocolate chips or banana?”
Flora stares up at the sizzling pan with a look of deep concentration, and I can’t help but smile at her as she focuses on this most pressing decision. She looks like she’s about to reply a few times, and my smile grows as I hover my hand over the bananas and the bag of chocolate chips in anticipation. Flora can’t seem to decide, though, and she looks up at me with a deeply distressed face.
“I don’t know!” she proclaims at last, and I chuckle, crouching down and whispering as if I’m hatching a secret plan with her.
“Here’s what we’re going to do, then, but don’t tell your mom. Promise?” I put a finger to my lips and make a zipping motion for emphasis. Her eyes widen in awe, and she nods quickly, zipping her lips shut too. I stand up and cut the bananas in half, then pour out half the usual serving of chocolate chips into a measuring bowl.
“What are you doing?” she whispers, glancing nervously over her shoulder.
“We’re going to add both!” I say with a wicked grin, as if revealing a world-shaking secret to her. She looks appropriately shocked and amazed, but she’s all too willing to be complicit in this heinous crime. She cranes her neck over the edge of the counter to watch as I add both ingredients to the pancake mix I’m making, and I hear Sage laughing from the living room.
“She’s gonna try to hide and find a way to stay behind with you, if you keep that up,” Sage jokes while I finish mixing the batter and start pouring pancakes into the hot pan. I grin at the comment and watch the batter spread out into an almost perfect circle.
Blossom is sleeping in this morning. I was up before dawn, as usual, and she didn’t seem to wake up when I got out of bed and headed into the kitchen. That was all for the best, because I don’t think it’s a good time for Sage to know what’s going on between me and her big sister. Not that I think she’s oblivious enough to have not picked up on it, but now simply isn’t the time to have that kind of conversation.
It also gives me a little quality time with Flora, which I wasn’t expecting to ask. I was staring out over the lake with a mug of black coffee in my hand when she crept out to see me, and from the moment she groggily asked if we were going to have breakfast this morning, my heart was sold. The kid could probably ask me to buy this cabin and I’d do it.
“Okay,” I tell Flora, “this is the delicate part. Everyone knows the first pancake is always a mess. It never comes out right. Do you want to help me try to flip it?”
She worries her lip, looking anxious, glancing between me and the griddle.
“I don’t know if I reach…” she says at last, embarrassed. I give a hearty laugh, and a moment later, I’ve scooped her up into my arms. She gives a squeal of delight, and I hold her up so that she’s facing the pan, well away from the hot metal. I hand her the spatula and get her to grip it with both of her small hands. It’s easy enough to do, since she weighs nothing and rests easily in one of my arms.
“Hold it carefully,” I say, “and you’ll want to slide the edge under the pancake all the way. Then just pick it up and tilt it to the side, fast. And remember, it’s completely okay if it folds over or falls out of the pan. We have plenty of batter.”
She nods as if accepting a sacred mission, and she prods at the side of the pancake cautiously. If she leaves it much longer, it’ll burn, but I don’t want to hurry her too much and confuse her. But to my surprise, she slides the spatula underneat
h the pancake like a pro, heroically lifts it up with a panicked face, and turns it sideways.
It hits the pan with the skill of a trained chef, and it gives a satisfying sizzle. Flora and I both stare at it with stunned faces for a moment.
“You did it!” I cheer triumphantly, lifting her up in the air and tossing her up, catching her as she giggles gleefully. She also drops the spatula during this move, but my reflexes are good enough that I catch it with ease.
“Yay!” she cheers with me, and I tend the pancake with her in my arms until it’s cooked to perfection.
“What about you, Sage?” I call into the living room.
“Uh...what about me?” she asks in almost a scoffing tone. I get the feeling that teenage moodiness hasn’t totally left her yet, which I can’t blame her for one bit.
“Chocolate, banana, or both?”
She pauses, seeming kind of surprised that I offered, but finally, she gives a curt answer from the living room.
“...chocolate. Bananas give me weird hives.”
“Roger that,” I say.
Flora and I make a whole heaping plate of pancakes, with her proudly flipping each one until she has the art down to perfection. Once enough are made for the rest of us, I quickly clean the pan to scrub off the banana residue and whip up a few more quick ones with just chocolate. The cabin owner keeps this place well stocked, since he seems like he’s used to families and long-term vacationers staying here. After about ten minutes, the three of us head outside to the porch to sit on the wooden planks and dig into our food while watching the lake.
“You’re an amazing chef, you know?” I tell Flora as she scarfs down her second pancake with the ferocity of a teenager. She beams at me through a mouth full of food, and I chuckle. “I could see you as a star chef someday, if you stick to it.”
“Yeah!” she says enthusiastically, turning to Sage with stars in her eyes. “Sage, will Mommy let me be chef?”
“Mommy would let you be anything you want to be,” Sage laughs through a bite of her own food.
As I beam down at Flora, I can’t help but feel how idyllic this all is. Flora doesn’t know who I am to her, and she doesn’t need to know right now, but sitting here and getting along with the family makes me feel like I’ve been a part of it all along. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels like a piece of a puzzle fitting into place after being gone too long. I’m even more surprised that I like the feeling. It makes me feel warm and complete in a new way I never knew I was missing.
Finally, I look over to Sage, who has been understandably quiet for all this. The last time I saw her, she was about fourteen. A lot must have changed over the years, and I don’t know what she thinks about me yet. I can’t deny what I feel for Blossom, and that should be enough, but now that I’m spending time with the whole group of them, I start to wonder how they feel about their caretaker having feelings for someone.
“Blossom and I talked a little about the past few years,” I say to her in a somewhat more serious tone as Flora gets engrossed in her food. “It sounds like things have been hard.”
Sage chuckles ruefully at that.
“You have no idea.” She nods to Flora, then looks to me. “But that kid right there is the glue that kept us together, believe it or not. When they had Blossom...hidden away,” she says in a low tone, obviously trying to hide some of the trauma from Flora herself, “it was bad. Real bad.”
“Yeah?”
“They hounded me after what happened with Blossom. Figured I wasn’t far off from running away and doing the same thing, you know? I mean, they were right, because I did try to run away more than once.”
“You’re kidding,” I say, though in truth, I’m completely unsurprised. Sage has a kind of fighting spirit to her that has always been there.
“Farthest I ever made it was a gas station halfway down to NYC where the cops picked me up,” she says with a sigh. “Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if they hadn’t gotten to me. I had a friend of a friend who had a couch for me to crash on. I’d probably have ended up on the streets, knowing those people, but at the time, even that sounded better than what I was dealing with at home. I know it sounds like stupid teen sh… stuff,” she stops herself from swearing, glancing at Flora. “But the thought process is like, if I stayed home, I knew for a fact things would just get worse and worse. If I ran, things would probably get worse, but there was still a little chance things could get better.”
“And a little chance is better than none,” I say, nodding. “Believe it or not, I get that. Been there, even.”
She raises her eyebrows. “No kidding?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who’s had it smooth?” I say, chuckling. “Yeah, I don’t know how much Blossom told you about me, but I went through all that when I was younger. Before I met her, even.”
I notice Sage glance past me to the house briefly, and I feel a pair of eyes watching me. That and the smell of fresh coffee tells me Blossom is in the doorway listening, but I pretend I don’t notice.
“I was in the foster system,” I say, watching Flora munch. “Parents were addicts. It got bad. I ended up spending as much time out of the house as I could. Before I ended up going down the rough path, when I was really little, I’d hit up the local library for free lunches in the summer just to get out of the house. The cafe barista noticed a bruise on me that didn’t look like it came from playing, one thing led to another, and one day, social services was knocking on my door.”
“Wow,” Sage says.
“Didn’t get much better,” I say. “Bounced from house to house, and it got harder to place me when I got a record as a little rebel. There was this one guy who was the worst, though. Guy named Ronald. Not Ron, no, he chose to go by Ronald.” Sage laughed at that, and I felt a little better by breaking up the grim tone of the story. “The guy drank like nothing I’ve ever seen. Anything could set him off. If I didn’t make my bed the right way or if I didn’t read his mind and know he wanted the floors swept, he’d just fly off the handle.” I stare off into the waters for a few moments, then give my head a little shake, realizing I’m starting to dissociate. “I’ve pushed a lot of that out of my mind, and I don’t think that’s the best road to go down over breakfast, so I’ll leave it at that. But yeah, I tried to run one time. Guy found me five miles down the road from the backwoods cabin where he lived. So, you did better than me, if that’s any reassurance,” I add with a smirk.
Sage can appreciate the grim humor-- there’s something therapeutic about it.
“I would have tried again,” Sage says, “if it weren’t for her.” She nods behind me, and I turn and pretend to be surprised at the sight of Blossom standing there with a mug of coffee steaming in her hand. She’s smiling warmly down at me, and she makes my heart beat hard against my chest. She’s dressed in an oversized t-shirt that comes down to her thighs, and her legs are bare, hair loosely tied back in a messy ponytail. She looks like she just woke up, and something about seeing her so comfortable makes me feel all the more attracted to her.
“Morning, gorgeous,” I say in a low tone, and she smiles warmly at me. There’s already a blush in her cheeks. I wonder how long she was back there before Sage glanced at her. She moves toward us and takes a seat by me and Flora, phone and headphones in her free hand.
“You’ve been busy,” she says, giving me a playful smile and glancing between me and Flora.
“You have a budding chef on your hands,” I say with a smirk. “Michelin stars in her future.”
“Hi Mommy!” Flora says brightly, scooting closer to her mother as she finishes off her pancakes.
“Hi sweetie,” she says as she hugs the girl to her. “Mommy can’t wait to see the sugar rush this gives you. Good thing your sous-chef is unbelievably cute,” she adds with a wink to me, and I mouth a half-serious “Sorry” back at her.
“Yeah!” the kid gushes enthusiastically, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“There are a fe
w in the microwave for you,” I add to Blossom. “Still warm, if you want to grab some.”
“I think I might just get to that,” she says, crossing her legs. “I like to start the morning with coffee and a podcast. It’s like a breakfast ritual.”
“Coffee, something nice to listen to, and a peaceful lake to look at-- that sounds like a ritual I can get behind,” I muse thoughtfully.
“Oh god, don’t tell her you want to listen to podcasts, she’ll talk your ear off listing all the good ones,” Sage says, and Blossom rolls her eyes with a scoff.
“I’m not that bad!”
“I think that sounds like a nice way to top off the morning, actually,” I say. “Let me get these plates cleaned up and I’ll come join you.”
I collect the empty plates from Flora and Sage, then head inside, feeling a smile that won’t fade from my face. I haven’t had anything like this in...as long as I can remember, if I ever had it at all. Is this what it feels like to bond with a family?
Is this what it means to be a father? A good one? Can I even be such a thing?
I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just breakfast, after all. Right?
I wash up the dishes in a matter of minutes, then go ahead and take Blossom’s pancakes out of the microwave. I pour myself a mug of fresh coffee and make my way back out onto the porch, carefully balancing my armful.
Outside, I see that Sage has already commandeered Flora and guided her out to the banks of the lake, walking around and inspecting different shiny rocks on the shore with her. Sitting on the porch alone is Blossom.
She hasn’t noticed me yet. Her legs are crossed, and she’s leaning back on her hands as she watches her sister and daughter play together with a soft smile on her face. I see her earbuds in her ears, leading down to her phone. She’s downright picturesque, and I feel my heart throbbing faster than ever. Blossom is something out of this world. She’s more than I ever dreamed I could have, and every time I see her simply living her life, taking joy in the simple pleasures, it drives me wild for her.
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