“You to let me do something I’ve thought about doing since I saw you,” she answers easily, the words flowing from her mouth.
“What’s that?”
She reaches down, puts her small hand around my cock and strokes towards her, then towards me – pulling and stroking as her eyes look into mine. “I wondered what it would take to bring you to your knees,” she admits as she bends on her knees, taking me in her mouth.
“Fuckin’ hell,” the words fall from my throat as the heat of her mouth envelopes me. It’s a struggle not to thrust against her mouth, fuck her face, and do all the dirty things I wanna do. We aren’t in that stage of our relationship yet; I need to try and hold that part of myself back a little.
Up, down, in, out – her mouth moves, slicking me with her saliva, letting me slide further down her throat. “Hadley,” I hiss, opening my eyes wide when she uses one had to grab my hip, pulling me closer. It’s then I see her ass, tilted up, her thighs spread against the comforter covering the bed. Holding her head to steady her, I bend, grasping her ass before reaching under her and using two fingers to tease her clit. Jesus Christ she’s wet. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anyone as wet as she is. “Damn, you’re ready for this, aren’t you?”
Moaning against my cock, she nods her head. She’s sucking cock like a champ - who am I to deny her the pleasure she’s giving me? Using my index and middle fingers I rub against her engorged nub, spreading the slickness along the path down to where her body immediately grips those two fingers.
“Oh God,” she pulls off my cock. It bobs in front of us, trying to get back to her mouth, but she’s let her head drop, thrusting against my fingers.
“Feel good?” I cup her chin, tilting it so I can look in her eyes, so I can feed her my hardness again.
“Yeah,” she answers before her tight lips take me back in.
“You do that, I’ll do this,” I use my thumb to tease her clit as I pump my fingers into her heat, twisting my wrist at the end, to give her a bump of my palm.
My knees shake, my thighs are locked as she goes for it. Sliding up and down both my cock and my fingers, moaning as I hit the spot she appears to love, the vibrations pushing me closer and closer to the edge. I can tell when she’s close, because she starts fucking my fingers faster. I pick up the pace before letting go of her chin so I can reach down to let one of her tits rest in the palm of my other hand. Denting the flesh, I pull roughly on the nipple, giving her a little of the not-so-sweet I sometimes like. She groans against me, letting me slip further against the back of her throat, and that’s it.
I come. Harder, faster, and stronger than I ever have before. Spurting down her throat, I open my mouth, intending to scream, or groan, or praise her. Exactly which I’m not sure, but nothing comes out, because she’s sucked the life completely out of me. I’m having a hard time locking my knees, hoping like hell I don’t fall over.
No woman has ever pushed me this far. None of them have ever made me come like this, have made me feel like this. The feeling, the full-body release I feel, is nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I wonder what the fuck I’ve been doing with my life that I haven’t felt this way before.
Before I’m done, I feel her pussy gripping my fingers. She’s coming, too.
And then we’re left with the aftermath of what we’ve done. I’m standing with my mouth hanging open, trying to catch my breath.
“Regrets?” I ask as the two of us try to pull ourselves together.
Her thighs are still shaking; my hands are trembling as I run them through my hair and try to get my wayward heart to stop beating like it’s a horse galloping over the prairie. I can’t tell if I’m excited about what just happened, or if I’m scared she doesn’t ever want to do it again. I’ll respect whatever the answer is, but after having the taste I just got, I want more. I want more like yesterday.
“None,” she smiles shyly up at me.
I’m for real the luckiest man in the world right now. I yank the covers back and motion for her to climb in before I walk bare-ass naked into the living room, check the door, and come back in. She’s still sitting up when I enter, her eyes wide.
“You don’t want me to go home?”
“No,” and the answer I’m about to give her is the most truth I’ve spoken in years. “It’ll be really nice to keep you with me. Tonight, neither one of us will be alone, and we’ll see how the future goes.”
If anyone understands those words, I know it’s her.
“I like to sleep on the left,” she grins. “And I don’t like to sleep naked.”
“You’re mostly in luck. I like to sleep on the right, but I do like to sleep naked.”
She laughs. “By all means, keep your hot body uncovered, but I’d love a shirt.”
I give her one, and for the first time in years, when I go to bed, I have a smile on my face. All because of the woman tucked into my side.
20
Hadley
“How are things going with Patrick?” Rebecca stares at me, and I swear she can tell just by looking, that Trick and I have been spending time together. It’s almost like she knows I’ve been having inappropriate thoughts. Not that we’ve done anything inappropriate yet, but after spending the night with him, I’ve done nothing but think about everything we could do to each other. All. the. Time. Giving him a blow job and him getting me off wasn’t inappropriate, right? We’re both consenting adults, both sure of what we were doing with one another.
Why do I feel like I’m lying to my mother after being out with my boyfriend the night before? Can she see the fucking hickey I have on my neck?
“Good,” I answer, nodding. I figure offering as little info as possible is the best way to not blow our cover. She seems super intuitive to anything and everything. The last thing I want to do is get someone else involved in a relationship that neither I nor Trick is prepared to put a label on yet.
“He and Riley are getting along?”
“They get along really well.” My tone is too bright; she’s going to know we have something going on. She’s going to know I spent the night with him. Damn I’m an awful liar. I know this. Why the fuck did I think I could lie to her?
“Their first meeting was a little touch and go,” she reminds me.
“It was,” I agree. “But it’s been a little over a month, and they seem to have an understanding of one another. She asked him to come to her piano lesson, and he did. I never thought she’d ask anyone else to come after her dad said he would and then never showed up. The invitation was a big move on her part and for him to come through has done more for her than anything else has.”
Rebecca cocks her head to the side, staring at me. “You and Patrick are getting along too, aren’t you?” She picks at a piece of lint on her stockings. “There’s not a rulebook, there are no bylaws which say you can’t see him, Hadley,” her voice is soft, like she’s afraid she’s going to scare me by speaking the words.
“I know,” I swallow hard, unexpected tears coming to my eyes. “Oh fuck,” I bite my bottom lip trying to staunch the flow.
“What’s wrong?” She puts her hand out, grabbing mine, holding on tightly. I’m thankful because I need an anchor in my life right now.
“I’m scared,” I admit for the first time. The tears fall slowly, streaking down my face. “I’m really scared. Completely and totally terrified.”
Her tone is soft as she cocks her head to the side, letting go of my hand as she hands me a tissue. “Why?”
How do I explain what I’m feeling to someone who’s never been in the situation I’ve been in? “What if I wrap myself up in this guy, wrap my daughter up in his life, and he turns around and does the same thing to me my husband did?”
“What exactly did your husband do?” I’ve never told her so it’s not unusual for her to ask, and if I’m going to start, I might as well start from the beginning.
“Ruined my life.” It’s dramatic, I know, but I still feel as if it’s an honest assessm
ent of the shit storm he put me in.
“Hadley, I can’t help if you don’t let me in,” she presses gently.
“Do you have a therapy degree too or something?” I shoot her a look, one that normally makes people stop prying.
She grins, settling in as she pulls one of her feet underneath her. “I do, so you’re stuck with me.”
Everybody keeps telling me I should go to a therapist, maybe now’s the time. “I’m only getting into this once, don’t even think this’ll become a standing appointment or anything like that,” I warn, because that’s not what I want. It’s never been what I wanted. I did the whole marriage counseling thing with him, and it didn’t help anything. All it succeeded in doing was make me feel like even more of a bitch than I already did.
“I don’t practice,” she holds her hands up in front of her. “But I’ll listen to you all day long.”
“I loved my husband,” I start out, because those words are true. “But the further away I get from the marriage, I realize I was in love with the idea of being married,” I confess for the first time. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few months, tried to analyze what I did wrong, where I went wrong, and what I could have done different, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion. “If I take out all the hurt, all the sadness, and all of the finger-pointing, I can understand why he cheated on me. Is that an awful thing to say?”
“No, but why don’t you explain?”
My thoughts are jumbled, and I try to take a moment to get them situated. I don’t want to sound like a rambling idiot. “I wasn’t all-in with my marriage. After we had Riley, the way he looked at me changed and I knew it. He didn’t see me as a wife anymore; he saw me as a mom. He never wanted me to be a mom. We argued over whether or not to try and start a family. He didn’t give in, he didn’t get to decide. I got pregnant because of a birth control mishap, so the power went to me, but before that? He held it completely over my head. The decision was to be his and his alone. Am I making sense?”
“He held having a child over you, like it was a bargaining chip?” She raises her eyebrows and readjusts her sitting position.
“Yeah, and I knew, in the back of my mind, I knew. If I had her, if I succeeded in making the family I wanted, I’d lose him, but I did it anyway. I thought I could change him, though. I thought after we brought her home, and he saw what a joy she was to our lives, he’d change his mind. He didn’t, and I let my life revolve around her. I made myself available to her whenever she wanted or needed me,” I stop and frown because I realize how sad I sound.
“You made the mistake of a lot of mothers; you didn’t include the father.”
“But he didn’t want to be included - I knew that when I got pregnant - so it shouldn’t have surprised me when we stopped sleeping together and I heard he was fucking his secretary.”
“How’d Riley take it?”
I’m quiet, because this is probably my greatest regret, my biggest mistake when it came to deciding to bring a child into the world. “Awful, because no matter what, she loved her dad. Everything about him, she loved. It didn’t matter if he gave her a lot of attention or a little attention, she absorbed it all, and when it was gone, it was gone. When he left, we had to sell the house because I couldn’t afford it on my own. I’ll be damned if I was going to ask him for anything.”
“Oh Hadley,” she soothes.
I cry harder, because it’s time I face the facts. I put us into this situation, and that’s why I work so hard to get us out of it. When we’re able to move into a new apartment, when we’re able to buy extra for ourselves, it’ll be because I did it, and not because my ex-husband paid me child support. “So in the end, I’m responsible for Riley losing her dad, her life, her home, and her sense of family. I’m the worst kind of mother.”
“But what about what you lost, Hadley?”
“It shouldn’t matter what I lost,” I argue, my shoulders shaking as I take a deep breath and begin to calm down.
“You lost your family.” Her voice is quiet, and in the stillness of the room, it drops like a mic. She’s right, I did – and the bitch of it is? I never really had it to begin with. It was all a lie, one I fabricated to make a life I was never going to have.
“I never had it to begin with.” My voice is monotone, the crying over. Reality is again setting in.
“But you wanted it.”
“God, I did,” I run my hands over my jean-clad thighs, trying to get some of my anxiety out. “I tried to force my views on someone who never wanted them, and then I got butt hurt when it didn’t work out.”
“I don’t think that’s what happened at all,” she argues. “You got married, you wanted a family, and the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with didn’t want the same things you did. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you ask him to live your dream with you.”
“I did, and he said no. He decided to find another woman who’s also not into kids, and together they’re going to live their life. I should be happy for him.”
“Oh fuck that,” Rebecca mumbles.
I’m surprised to hear those words coming out of her mouth, and a giggle bursts from my throat. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Don’t be happy for him. Regardless of what he wanted, he’s got a beautiful daughter who’s intelligent and kind, and years from now he’ll want a relationship with her, and there’ll be nothing there for him to build on.”
Putting my thumb up to my mouth, I bite my nail. “The question for me now, is how far do I let Trick into my life?”
“How far do you want to let him in?”
“All the way,” is out before I can stop it. “And that’s what scares me.”
As I get in my car, I turn on the radio louder than I normally do. I feel like I need to run away from my thoughts a bit. Rebecca asking the questions she did, makes me wonder if I’m ready for Trick. Am I ready to open myself up again and let another man in. I told Rebecca I wanted to let him in all the way, but can I? Do I?
I know without a doubt the answer to those questions is yes. Never in my life has anyone made me feel the way he does. It’s this nervousness in my stomach, a shakiness in my hands, and a thumping in my heart.
If I’m honest with myself, the part I’m worried about is if we’ll last. How long can I expect him to put up with a child that’s not his and a woman with her guard up.
“You’ve gotta let your guard down Hadley,” I say out loud to myself.
It’s true. He’s given me a piece of himself and I need to give him a piece of myself. It’s not fair to keep asking him to give when I’m not willing to meet him half-way. Do I know we’ll last forever? No, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned – there are no guarantees in life. My only fear is Riley getting her heart set on us being a family, but I also realize she’ll more than likely do that with any man in my life.
“I’m gonna do it,” I grip the steering wheel tighter, mind made up.
There’s a smile on my face as I drive to pick up Trick and Riley. A smile I haven’t showed to the world in a very long time.
Trick
“All right Sprite, which one are we getting?”
Hadley’s let us come hang out at a pumpkin patch while she meets with Rebecca. I’m nervous with her by myself, but I’m grateful Hadley trusts me enough to have alone time with Riley. Halloween is coming up, and we’re picking out a couple of pumpkins. I think Sprite’s grown a foot since the last time I saw her a few days ago. How can her dad not realize what he’s missing out on?
“We need three,” she puts her hands out in front, counting on her fingers. “One for me, one for you, and one for Mom.”
“Then we’ll get three.” Damn good thing she rode with her mom, because all those aren’t going to fit on my bike. “You ever carved one of these things before?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “Last year we painted ours, but this year I wanna carve it. I saw this show on TV where a family got toget
her and did it.”
So that’s what this is about. She wants something normal, and who doesn’t? She’s a little kid who hasn’t had a normal life in what seems to be a few years.
“Well, Sprite, we can definitely do it. We can make some more s’mores and hang out with Alfred in the back yard.”
“His name’s Tux,” she argues, and I grin down at her.
Her small hand is in mine, and I pull hard on her, pulling her up into my arms. There’s a lot of people around, and it makes me nervous. She’s important and special, and I would never want to lose her or let anyone hurt her. “His name is Alfred,” I push her glasses up further on her nose.
“They fall down too much,” she squints at me.
“Have they always done that?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
They fall down again, I push them back up. “Maybe we need to talk to your mom about them not fitting.”
“I don’t want to cost her any more money,” she whispers.
My heart fucking breaks, because I’m sure Riley’s heard Hadley talking to other people about her financial situation, or maybe Hadley’s talked to her about it without meaning to. Kids pick up on so much shit, and to know this sweet girl is wearing ill-fitting glasses because she doesn’t want to cause problems for her mom is killing me. Fucking killing me.
“I think she’ll be fine with it, Sprite. It’s not a big deal, and I think your mom will be more upset that you haven’t told her than anything. You know I don’t do promises, but I bet she’ll be glad you told her.”
Riley throws her arms around my neck and hugs me. It’s enough to almost knock me off my game, to almost bring me to my knees.
“I feel safe with you, Trick. I don’t care what you did.”
“Did they tell you what I did?”
She looks like she’s in trouble, hiding her face. “I heard Mom talking about it to Mrs. Oliver. She was worried what your reputation would do to me. But I don’t know what a reputation is. All I know is you’re my friend and I like spending time with you.”
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