Patchwork Paradise

by Indra Vaughn

  Thomas kissed me, and caressed me, and did everything right. I loved the feel of his skin, the rise and fall of the landscape of his body, the scritch of his chest hairs against my palm. When I took his briefs off, his cock slapped against his belly, and I licked at the wet tip, just once. Thomas’s breath shuddered out of his mouth, and I reached for him, drew him down between my legs.

  We kissed and held each other, and when he peeled off my underwear, I told myself I wanted this. And I did. I did. But my body felt like a live wire, and Thomas’s touch sparked me like static wherever he touched.

  I could feel him tremble. We were too quiet. Our eyes were too wide when we dared to look at each other. When he reached for the lube, I made an involuntary noise, and he put the bottle away again.

  He pulled me against him and hugged me tight. “Not like this,” he whispered in my ear. “I don’t want it to be like this.”

  I nodded against his neck and tried not to cry.

  We lay in silence like that for a long time, until eventually Thomas sighed and rolled onto his back. He covered his face with his elbow, but drew me close with the other arm so I didn’t feel like he’d shut me out.

  I stroked his chest, slipped my fingers through the hairs, rubbed my thumb lightly over his nipple. “Are you okay?”

  He let his arm fall away, turned his head, and smiled at me. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

  I nodded.

  “I think we worked ourselves up too much and our expectations were too high.”

  “Yes, I think so too. But that’s okay, right? I mean, we have the whole weekend. It felt so weirdly . . . planned.”

  “I think that’s how it goes when you have kids, but yeah. Usually by that time you’ve already had all sorts of sex together.” His deep laugh rumbled under my ear, and I smiled, pressing my cheek closer to his heart. It thumped evenly, and I closed my eyes.

  I was almost dozing off when he said, “So you’re sure you’re okay with Milo and me living here with you?”

  “Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

  “Just making sure you haven’t changed your mind about having a baby and his dad messing up your house now that you’ve had some time to let it sink in.”

  “Oh, please,” I said, waving my hand in the air. “It’s not the baby who messes up my house.”

  Thomas made a mock-outraged face and rolled over and pushed me back into the bed. “I see how it is,” he said, his eyes twinkling in the soft moonlight. “You’re using me for my adorable son.”

  “You got that right.”

  I laughed when he began to kiss-bite my neck, and we kissed lazily after that until I fell asleep.

  It was barely dawn when I struggled out of sleep. Very pale sunlight touched my closed eyelids, and I cursed the curtains I’d forgotten to close the night before. I was also chilly since I’d managed to lose all the covers. For a second I thought about groping around to wrap myself back up, but the effort seemed too much. I was lying half on my stomach, half clutching a pillow, one leg pulled up. I had morning wood a lumberjack would be jealous of. My brain felt foggy with lust, and remnants of a very weird erotic dream clung to the edges of my memory. Something to do with being comfortably adrift in warm water, where a very friendly, tentacle-y plant was getting closely acquainted with my— Oh my God.

  Something wet touched my asshole, and I squeaked, but a pair of firm hands came down on my buttocks and held me fast. I looked over my shoulder to see Thomas lying between my spread legs, and he licked me again.

  “Jesus,” I whispered weakly. A hot flush raced up my body, and I buried my face in the pillow. He spread my cheeks farther, languidly sliding his tongue over my asshole, and I quivered all over. “Ah, God.” He did it again, and then again, and then he speared his tongue into me. “Oh my God, Thomas.”

  I scrabbled at the sheets, bit the pillow, bunched up the covers with my toes. His fingers gave my ass a light squeeze, the is-this-okay kind, and my entire body heated with embarrassment and arousal. He hesitated. I opened my mouth to say Don’t stop, but no sound came out. So instead, I lifted my hips a little and pushed back against his mouth. My face flushed even hotter.

  No one had ever done this to me. For me. No one. I moaned when he licked me again, tickled me with his tongue, nibbled on my taint. He touched my balls, and I made a bewildered, turned-on noise. I heard the click of a cap over the harshness of my own breathing, and spread my thighs farther.

  “Fuck, Ollie.” Thomas bit the swell of my ass, and I was glad to hear he sounded as wrecked as I felt. “This okay?”

  I nodded into the pillow because deliberate words were still beyond my brain capacity. He held my ass spread with one hand, pushed his tongue into my hole, and followed it with a slick, thick finger. I moaned brokenly as he worked his way inside, and white light exploded behind my eyelids. Every time he moved, I thought I’d come, but I didn’t. Instead he expertly kept me on the edge of the abyss, opening me up in ways I couldn’t even keep count of, until all I knew was that I needed him, and I needed him in me right this second.

  “Fuck me,” I croaked. “Thomas, I want it. Now.”

  “Ollie . . .” he whispered almost reverently. I heard the crinkle of a condom wrapper, the slick noise of more lube, and then blunt pressure I’d learned to breathe through, yet it felt so different. He entered me slowly, and I couldn’t hold back the guttural moan as he bottomed out. I kept breathing evenly as my body adjusted to him. He ran a hand over my flank, down my spine, over my arm, until he could lace our fingers together. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I reached down and rubbed my free hand along his thigh, felt the flex of his muscles, and twisted my head to the side. The kiss he offered was slightly awkward, but I didn’t care. He stared into my eyes and began to move, slowly. He never looked away. I saw everything: how vulnerable he was, how awed, how in love. A reflection of what I felt on the inside, right there so clear in his gaze.

  He fucked me tenderly at first, finding his way, learning my body, then a little harder when he understood how I liked it.

  It didn’t take long before we were covered in a sheen of sweat, and the friction on my cock became almost too much to bear.

  “I’m going to come soon,” I whispered, “if you keep going like that.”

  “Not yet,” he said and took his weight off me. At first I didn’t get what he wanted, but he guided me with soft touches until we were both sitting up, me in his lap, and understanding dawned. “This okay?” he asked.

  I turned my head and looked at him. Thomas still wasn’t hiding anything. He was worried and a little scared, and God—I loved him.

  “Oh yeah,” I murmured and lifted my arm so I could cup the back of his head. I kissed him deeply, and he began to fuck me harder, flesh on flesh, the slapping noise unmistakable, but I was too far gone to care. A hot burn raged in my belly, and pleasure sparked up my spine and down my legs. My cock hung too heavy and thick to stand upright, and was dripping a steady thread of clear liquid onto the sheets. We were slick with sweat now, and I had a fraction of awareness left to be really impressed with how Thomas had managed to keep his rhythm for this long and this hard.

  He had his hands on my chest, holding us both upright. “Make yourself come,” he panted in my ear.

  I shook my head. “Don’t need to.”

  I keened when his rhythm faltered for barely a second, and then he kept going, harder than before, the tempo nearly punishing. I wanted to say almost and that’s it and oh God, but I didn’t have the breath for it. Broken, cut-off moans kept falling from my mouth, but I was almost—there—

  “Jesus fuck, you’re killing me here,” Thomas croaked, and I tensed all over, gripping his hair too hard and pulling his face into my neck, but I couldn’t help it. My body seized, my cock jumped and pulsed, and my ass squeezed around Thomas’s cock as I finally started coming. His thrusts turned sharp and frantic. He cried out between his teeth, for he’d clamped them down on my neck, and pushed hard and deep
, staying pressed into me and forcing another jet of come from my balls.

  I didn’t know where he got the strength from, but he managed to extract himself gently and lower me onto the bed. A few oblivious minutes later, the come and lube had been wiped from my body, and he’d wrapped himself around me, tight, like he never wanted to let go.

  “Ollie . . .” he whispered. “That was really . . .” He fell silent, and I smiled. I wanted to make a joke, but my brain was too orgasm-addled.

  “Yes,” I said, turning over so I could kiss him. “Yes, it really was.”

  “Now this,” I told Milo, “is much more exciting than that baby oatmeal stuff. See?” I held up a spoon of goop. “It’s squishy and green, and so much fun to stick your hands in.” I paused. “But I suggest you only do that with Daddy. With me, you can eat nice and clean, can’t you, you big boy?”

  He’d changed so much, I found it hard to believe he’d been such a tiny baby only a few months ago. I wouldn’t miss the interrupted nights—he’d started sleeping for ten hours at a time about a week ago—but he already didn’t fit into the crook of my arm anymore, and I missed holding him like that.

  “Da da,” Milo said, and he bounced in his high chair.

  “Yes! Daddy, that’s right. He should be home any minute. And we’ll tell him we’ve missed him lots and lots, won’t we? Because we did. Now, how about we surprise him and show how well you can eat, huh? This is avocado. Can you say that? A-vo-ca-do.”

  I held up the spoon, and Milo looked at it. He looked back at me. Back at the spoon. Then opened his mouth.

  “Yay, see? Easy peasy.” I gave him the spoonful of avocado I’d pureed. He held it in his mouth. His face scrunched. I braced myself, ready with a paper towel, but he swallowed it down. “All right! Fist bump, little man. You are the best.” We bumped fists.

  “Da da,” Milo said again, and he giggled and kicked his legs. He was looking over my shoulder, so I spun around. Thomas was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his broad chest. He looked windswept and slightly chilled from the December cold. His hair was starting to grow again, and it fell loosely against his cheekbones. I wanted to climb him like a tree.

  “Oh, hi,” I said. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to hear how well you can say ‘avocado.’” He grinned, and I rolled my eyes.

  “Your son is eating new things. He said, ‘No more baby oatmeal! That stuff is boring and for ordinary babies, not for special babies like me.’ Isn’t that r—” I turned to look at Milo just in time to see him stuff his hand in the bowl. Before I could even blink, I got a face full of avocado. He stared at me for a second, his blue eyes wide, then shrieked with laughter. His hands flailed about, more avocado going everywhere. When he caught sight of his green fingers, he stopped laughing and happily stuffed them in his mouth.

  “Well,” Thomas said as I plucked goop from my eyebrow. “At least he seems to like it.”

  “Har har. How did it go?” At this point I was pretty unfazed by anything that wasn’t bodily fluids flying in my direction, so I reached for the paper towel and cleaned my face.

  Thomas loosened his tie, looked at the chair, gave it a quick wipe, and sat down. “The contracts are signed,” he said. “Milo will officially be with us every other week from January onwards.”

  “And Liesbeth is happy with that?”

  “Yep.”

  I took in the sadness in his smile. “How about you? Are you happy with that?”

  He sighed and stroked his thumb over Milo’s chubby arm. The baby had put on a lot of weight over the past two months, so much that we’d brought it up during his last wellness visit. The doctor had assured us the weight would drop once he started crawling instead of flailing in place like a tiny and adorable beached whale.

  “I’m going to miss him like crazy, but I’m happy he’ll be with his mom,” Thomas said. He put his other hand on my arm. “And I’m happy I’ll get to spend more time with just you.”

  I covered his hand, squeezed it, and asked, “So you ready for our trip this weekend?”

  “Oh yeah, so ready. Do I need to do any more packing for Milo?”

  “No, it’s all done. He doesn’t need much anyway. Mom has plenty of baby stuff at her place now.” Thomas kept looking at Milo, his eyes gentle and a little wet. “We can always change our minds, you know. We can easily take him with us. We have that travel cot and—”

  “No. I want this weekend with you. It’s another month before Liesbeth has him half the time, and . . .” He bit his lip. “I’ve really been looking forward to some alone time.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yes.”

  I studied my nails. “We could go kayaking while we’re in the Ardennes.”

  Thomas narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t even go there,” he said, voice low.

  “Okay, that’s fine. I mean, there’s always the lovely heights of the mountains. Nice, steep paths we could climb, all the way up to the towering peaks, with staggering views of deep valleys below— Don’t you dare!” Thomas had lifted Milo’s spoon and aimed a heap of avocado at me. “You are setting an example for your son! If you throw food at me, he will think he can—”

  Splat.

  The avocado hit me right between the eyes. Thomas dropped the spoon and covered his mouth. Silence fell. Then Milo began to laugh so hard, we had to scramble so his high chair didn’t fall over.

  “I really didn’t aim for your face,” Thomas said, trying not to laugh. “I’m so sorry.”

  I rose slowly to my feet, grabbed another paper towel, and with all the dignity I could muster, cleaned my face again.

  “Well,” I said to Milo. “You’ll be happy to know you’ll at least grow up with one responsible parent while you live in this house.”

  Milo smiled, stuck out his arms in my direction, and said, “Da.”

  Thomas froze, and I froze. “He called you Dad,” Thomas said.

  “No, I’m sure that was just a noise. And he calls you ‘Da da.’ I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.”

  “Ollie.” Thomas rounded the table and hugged me. “I’m not jealous. I think that’s great. I want you to be his dad. I mean . . . if that’s what you want too.”

  I pressed my face against Thomas’s chest, then sneaked a peek at Milo. His face was scrunched up, and he held out his arms as he kicked his legs. I worked myself loose from Thomas’s grip, lifted Milo out of his seat, and didn’t care he was covered in food. I hugged him tight, and he swung his little arms around my neck. With my free hand, I drew Thomas closer, and he engulfed us both.

  “Two dads and a mom, huh,” I croaked. I hid my face again when tears stung my eyes. “That has to beat growing up with only one parent.”

  “Da,” Milo said again, and he put his head on my shoulder.

  I lifted my face to Thomas’s. “You’ve made me so happy,” I said to him. His eyes were a little damp too. “Both of you. When Sam first died, I thought I’d never be happy again. I didn’t think I could ever feel like this again, and look at us now. Thank you for being there for me.”

  “I was always there for you, Ollie,” Thomas said. He kissed me lightly on the mouth and smiled. He held us closer. The three of us stood in the kitchen that had once been mine and Sam’s and was now the heart of this patchwork family. “And I always will be.”

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  After living in Michigan, USA, for seven wonderful years, Indra Vaughn returned back to her Belgian roots. There she will continue to consume herbal tea, do yoga wherever the mat fits, and devour books while single parenting a little boy and working as a nurse.

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