Chapter 34 Taste the Rainbow Cara #3
Emmett carefully rises from the window, Abel clutched to his chest. It’s the never-ending love that shines in his eyes that nearly knocks me to my knees as he gently tucks Abel into bed, sifting his fingers through those copper waves.
He brings Abel’s hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his palm and whispering, “If you and your mama were the only stars in my sky, that would be all I needed.”
He turns toward the door, pausing when he catches me, a wide grin spreading across his face. He’s silent as he ambles over, and my heart flutters the same way it always has. I back up one step, then another, and Emmett reaches out, fingers gently wrapping around my throat, hauling me back to him.
“Hi, Mama,” he whispers, the words pressed against my lips as he pries them open, slipping his tongue inside.
“Hi, Daddy.”
He groans, dropping his head to my shoulder. “No. You can’t. Not Daddy. You know what it does to me.”
Tossing my arms over his shoulders, I let him hoist me up, his hands squeezing my ass as he carries me to our room. I nip his earlobe. “What does it do to you, Daddy?”
He drops me on the bed, holding my stare as he slides his belt off. “Makes me wanna mark you. Own you. Fuck you.” He lifts one shoulder. “Makes me wanna marry you all over again, truth be told.”
“I’ll need at least a year to plan that.”
He forces a sigh as he crawls over me. “I guess loving you will have to do until then.”
My palms glide over his back, guiding his shirt over his head. “I knew you’d be such a dangerous DILF.”
“Have you considered that it was my costume tonight? Maybe that’s why you’re so horny.”
I bite back my laughter. “You guys are so secure in your manhood. Nothing has ever been a bigger turn-on.”
“I knew it,” he murmurs, mouth dipping to claim mine. “I can put my spandex suit back on if you give me a minute to wiggle into it.”
“Aw, but then the Pussy Pounder Five Thousand would be all cooped up in there.” I slide my hand into his pants, palming his thick cock as he hisses. “And don’t you think he’d rather be somewhere else?”
A throaty hum rumbles from his chest, and suddenly one of my wrists is cuffed to the bed and Emmett’s ditching my pants on the floor, working my panties down my thighs.
“I can think of at least three somewhere elses he’d rather be.
” He spreads my legs wide, grinning as he runs the tip of his finger through my wet pussy. “Let’s start with this greedy cunt.”
But he doesn’t just start with it. He starts, he finishes, goes back for round two, and then round three after a detour in my mouth.
He fucks me, over and over, until his cum is seeping out of me, soaking the sheets beneath us, and then?
Then he dips his mouth, fucking his cum back into me with his glorious tongue before he licks me clean, leaving me a quivering, sweat-soaked mess as he collapses beside me.
Emmett traces the letters inked on my upper thigh, smooths the bite mark he left around his favorite four-letter word somewhere between rounds one and two. “Do you ever think about the what-ifs?” he asks softly.
“What if it worked?”
He nods. “Sometimes it keeps me up at night, thinking about how we got here. How we spent so long fighting for something, begging for the outcome we dreamed of, breaking ourselves along the way. I was furious with life for taking something from us, but then… then life gave us Abel. A love we fought for. A love we begged for. A love we needed.” Emmett wraps his arms around me, pulling me against him.
“We needed Abel. And he needed us. I guess… I guess that’s the what-if I think about.
What if it had worked when we wanted it to, and we didn’t have Abel? ”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? To be almost… grateful, in a sense.
” Make no mistake: It is a battle I wouldn’t wish on anyone, an everlasting grief that’s etched itself so deeply inside me, forced me to say goodbye to who I was and welcome a new me, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do.
And yet… “I wouldn’t change it. It gave us Abel, and Abel, he…
” My eyes flutter closed, and I shake my head.
“I knew it would be a different kind of love, you know? Different than loving my friends, or even you. But nothing could have prepared me for how powerful it is, the love between a parent and a child.”
Emmett pulls my hand to his chest, lays it over the gentle thrum of the heartbeat that lives below. “Nothing could have prepared me for how healing it is, to love someone so pure, so innocent, the way I wanted to be loved when I was a kid.”
I lift my hand to his jaw, guiding his gaze down to mine. “You deserved to be loved the way you love Abel. You deserved every ounce of patience you give him, all the encouragement, the safety to be yourself without fear of abandonment.”
A silent tear slips free, rolling down his temple. “I know. And I know now how easy it is to love a child like that, even on the hardest days.”
I press a kiss to his open palm before clutching it at my chest, choosing to just exist in this moment, the peaceful stillness that comes with these quiet truths we trade late at night.
“Have you given any more thought to what you’d like to do with your embryo?” Emmett asks after a few minutes.
I expect the tight pull of my shoulders, the swelling pain in my chest, the squeeze of my throat.
I expect the rush of anxiety, ready to hit like a tsunami, to drag me under.
It’s why I gave myself permission a month ago not to rush when the clinic notified us that they would be closing, and they asked us what we’d like them to do with our last frozen embryo.
And yet when Emmett gently broaches the subject for the first time in weeks… none of it comes.
“We don’t have to use it,” he reminds me like he did when we went over our options: move it to a new clinic so we can use it in the future, dispose of it—a term I hate, for some reason—or donate it.
“And if you’re not sure, we can always move it and decide later on.
” His fingertips touch my chin, bringing my eyes to his.
“I want you to know that watching you become a mother has been the single most beautiful thing I’ve witnessed in this lifetime.
And because I am blessed to share a lifetime with you, I have witnessed many, many beautiful things. ”
I hum a laugh, nuzzling my cheek into the palm of his hand. “So true. So blessed.”
Emmett chuckles, the sound so hearty, so warm, I feel it right down to the tips of my toes.
His fingertips drift down the slope of my nose, sweep over my cheekbones, trace the shape of my lips.
“Love isn’t easy. It’s cracking yourself wide open when you’re terrified to do so, just so someone can know the deepest, darkest parts of you.
It’s recognizing your faults so you can grow as a person and grow together.
It’s choosing to have the hard conversations instead of taking the easy way out, fighting to be together even when the fight is exhausting.
It’s a choice you have to make every day, a mountain you climb together.
Love isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be.
But loving you, firefly? Loving you is the easiest choice I’ve ever made, and I’ll choose you for the rest of my tomorrows. ”
“And after that too?”
He presses his smile to mine, and I’m sure of the answer before he breathes the promise into me.
“And after that too.”
Two months later, New Year’s Day
“You guys didn’t have to come with me.”
“I could always use a little girl time. I’m stuck with the boys far too often.” Lennon swipes a handful of French fries through her Frosty, then stuffs them in her mouth. “Pwus, you took us thwu da Wendy’s dwive-thwu.”
My gaze flicks to the soft swell of her belly as she rides in my passenger seat, and I smile. “I know better than to deprive my pregnant friends of cravings.”
“What’s the science behind hot, salty French fries and cold chocolate ice cream, anyway?
” Jennie mumbles. “They shouldn’t go together, but they do.
” She drops her head back, a gob of Frosty dripping from her fries, landing on her waiting tongue.
“You know what? I don’t care.” She tosses the fries in her mouth, humming happily. “I wish I got twee of dem.”
Oh, yeah, Jennie’s pregnant too.
With the exact same due date as Lennon.
You can imagine what the rest of us have been dealing with between Jaxon and Garrett and the competition they’ve turned their wives’ pregnancies into.
“We’re gonna get rid of the evidence, right?” Olivia tosses the last of her food in her mouth before balling up the garbage. “If Cawta sees dis, I’ll neva hear da end of dis.”
Rosie nods, mouth full as she grabs everyone’s garbage and shoves it inside a dog poop bag she pulls from her purse. “Adam give me dat wook, wike he’s not mad”—she swallows—“just disappointed he didn’t get one too.”
I snort a laugh as I pull into my garage and cut the engine. Olivia and Rosie aren’t pregnant, just tired of having to share their nursing snacks with their huge-appetite husbands. “Your secret is safe with me,” I say as Rosie stuffs the evidence into my garbage can.
Jennie holds up her fries and Frosty. “Last chance, Care.”
My nose wrinkles. “No thanks. My stomach’s still not right after last night.”