She settled somewhere on the latter, smiling and moving away from me.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s get Charlotte.”
I couldn’t exactly pretend that the afternoon was “normal.” From the outside, it might have looked like a set of parents taking care of their newborn child, but we were avoiding hard conversations so long as Charlotte was awake. So there was always a small sense of tension around the room, the feeling that something needed to be addressed that wasn’t.
But boy, it sure felt nice.
This little angel—sometimes devil when she decided not to listen to us—was mine. I wanted to get to know her better. What did she look like when she was laughing? Had she said anything resembling any words? What were her favorite toys?
And as for Kelly…just because I’d taken a step back didn’t mean I didn’t want to ravish her anymore. I could feel that she still hadn’t had anyone dominate her like I did. I could vaguely recall her saying she hadn’t slept with anyone since me, but what I could definitely know was that no one had taken her like me.
And yes, she still craved it.
And yes, so long as Charlotte was awake, I could put it on the back burner. Unlike Scott, I didn’t give in to temptation that easily.
But you’re still giving in all the same. Maybe he just got smart. Maybe he just realized that it’s not worth it to be so chaste. There’s more to life than this.
Around six in the evening, Kelly said that pizza was on its way. She said that she normally cooked food, but after the craziness of the past twenty-four hours, she wasn’t exactly in a cooking mood. And who the hell could blame her?
When the pizza arrived, she put the box between us and a bottle of formula in front of Charlotte. She alternated between bites of pizza and feeding Charlotte. At first, it was just a quiet, low-key dinner. But I couldn’t stay quiet for too long.
That was my daughter right there.
“Charlotte’s always this good for you?”
“For the most part,” Kelly said, some relief evident in her voice. “Sometimes she can be a little grouchy and a little loud, but I got lucky with her.”
Lucky that as a single mom, you don’t have too much on your plate.
“She is quite well behaved,” I said, an understatement for how I really felt looking at her. “I suppose she gets it from her mother.”
Kelly looked up at me in surprise, gave a half-smile, and shook her head.
“Depends on if we’re talking about the mother from Colorado or the mother of the previous thirty-some years.”
I had a lot I wanted to say there. What was Kelly like before Colorado? What did she really want from me being there? Did she want more kids? What did she think the future held?
But it wasn’t in my nature to ask such questions. The only questions I asked were ones that helped me accomplish my mission, end of story, period. And with the mission accomplished, I didn’t know what to say.
So I didn’t say anything. I just watched the two of them interact, the idyllic appearance of mother and child, Charlotte and Kelly looking at each other with loving eyes.
And me just watching, eating pizza, trying to get the contemplative and deep thoughts out of my head.
“Come,” Kelly said roughly ten minutes later, “help me put Charlotte to bed.”
I followed her up the stairs to Charlotte’s room. Even though I’d gone in earlier to help get her from her crying, I looked around the room like I’d never been there before. I might have added a few things here and there, maybe some cameras to keep an eye on her, but by and large, Kelly had done well.
“All right, time to say goodnight.”
I took a step back outside the room, keeping an eye on Kelly. She bent over and whispered some things to Charlotte, but I wasn’t trying to pay attention to her words. I was paying attention to her ass.
I’d done well avoiding doing anything all day with Kelly. I’d been a good father, I’d talked when we needed to talk, and I’d reigned in my desire.
But that came at the cost of some pent-up energy I needed to unleash. And I could no longer contain that energy. I just fucking had to make Kelly mine.
Goddamn, though, was she taking forever just hovering over Charlotte like that. C’mon, child. Go to sleep so Daddy can spend some time with Mom.
Finally, Kelly kissed Charlotte on the forehead, rose, and walked out of the room, looking back a couple of times at her—our—daughter. She closed the door, turned around, and looked up at me.
“What?” she said, half-curious, half-starting to figure it out.
I thought of saying something right there, but no words would encapsulate what I wanted to do—what I would do. I moved my hands to her hips and pulled her into me. My cock threatened to press out of my pants—I didn’t care.
Nor, I could see, did Kelly.
Recognition crossed her face. It all seemed to move in slow motion. She’d felt this once before—the night I had taken her to the motel and fucked her brains out.
There was one difference this time, though.
I wasn’t going anywhere when it was all said and done. I had too much here, cared for too much here, wanted too much here for me to just up and leave. No, this was not a hit and run of sorts.
This was, in fact, just the beginning of something incredible.
I moved down to kiss her, and like we’d taken the lid off of each other, Kelly practically leaped into me, her tongue already out of
