Chapter 39 #2
His eyes get wider and darker, and his grip on me tightens, and I know for a fact I’m going to have to get him to bone me again, because this whole in love with me and angry with someone else thing would definitely be total dynamite on the orgasm front. For both of us.
‘A ho?’ he intones in his sternest don’t make me voice.
I think back. ‘A whore. A gold-digging little whore who worked at a sex club and didn’t give a toss about you or the girls.
’ Branded on my brain much? ‘Which is, like, so fucking rude. Also, who says toss anymore? It was weird that she was capable of saying whore but not fuck or shit instead of toss. Right?’
He’s not listening to my semantics, because his nostrils are flaring, and I just know he’s going to nail me to this bed like he threatened-slash-promised to before.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘Fucking hell, sweetheart, I am so fucking sorry. I would never have invited her if I’d thought she’d in any way disrespect you like that—it’s unforgivable.’
‘I think she has her eye on you,’ I tell him. ‘Like, I can’t tell if she even fancies you, but she definitely wants to get her hands on the girls’ upbringing. There was a lot of talk about the Eleven Plus. And speech therapists?’
He rolls his eyes and presses his lips together in a if I wasn’t naked with you right now I’d break down her door and not in a hot way way. But the way he does it is very hot. ‘She needs to back the fuck off.’
‘Yeah. So if it doesn’t last between us, promise me you’ll never get it on with her? Because it’d be miserable for the girls. And she’d probably change their names to Skippy and Trippy to rhyme with Dippy.’
He sniggers before rolling us over again so I’m pinned beneath him. ‘Repeat after me, Madeleine. It will last between us.’
God, he’s so gorgeous. He has me all caged in and breathless, both from lust and the fact that he is actually squishing my lungs, but fuuuuck, having his weight on me is hot. And that right there is the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me. And I swear his big, fat cock just twitched—
‘Oh.’ I blink.
‘What?’ he asks, and I can tell he’s pissed off that I haven’t yet repeated his deliciously stern words back to him.
‘Um. I may have, um, lashed out at her.’
He grins and smooths my hair out of my face. ‘That’s my girl. What did you say?’
I smile, and it’s not my armoured-up smile from the past few days. It’s victorious, and amused, and pretty fucking smug. ‘I told her I had not one but two trust funds and that I wasn’t interested in your big, fat bank balance but only in your big, fat, cock.’
His shout of laughter is so unexpected I actually jump, or I would if I wasn’t squashed beneath him. He slaps the pillow hard before kissing me even harder. ‘You little fucking beauty. Oh my God.’
I lie there and grin up at him.
‘I can’t believe you said that. What did she say—fuck, I’d have killed to see that.’
‘I don’t know. I sashayed off like a queen and left her mouthing like a fish out of water,’ I say. I don’t mention the subsequent puking, but his expression changes.
‘This is what’s had you freaked out, these past few days?’ he asks, staring down at me.
‘I suppose. Well, kind of. I mean, not her. But what she said, because it was true.’
‘Mads. How could you possibly have taken a word of what she said seriously? The woman’s clearly unhinged. And fucking disrespectful.’
‘She had a point,’ I venture. ‘Like, clearly the girls don’t deserve someone awful like her, but…
don’t you all deserve a proper grownup who can actually help you in your life, and make it easier?
’ I squirm, because this part is seriously awkward to say, mainly because we haven’t discussed it at all.
‘Maybe you should be looking for a girlfriend who can slot into your life. I know we haven’t talked about it, but I don’t have a clue what your long-term plans are for you, or us, or the girls. Ouch, you’re squashing me.’
‘Fuck. Sorry.’ He rolls us back onto our sides again and tucks me in close to him, throwing a gorgeously hairy, muscular leg over mine.
‘Mads.’ He seems to be choosing his words carefully.
‘I haven’t brought it up because I haven’t wanted to freak you out.
I mean, you’re twenty-fucking-three, for God’s sake.
‘What am I supposed to say? Hi beautiful young woman, in the prime of your sexuality. Come and live with me and my bereaved children and sign away your future to us? I can’t ask you to do that, and I don’t for the life of me know how to square how much I love you and want to be with you with the guilt I’d feel if I asked you to make that sacrifice for me, or for us.
Okay? I haven’t figured any of it out yet.
‘But that’s very, very different from me thinking you wouldn’t be utterly magnificent, and perfect, and fucking everything, in whatever format our relationship took. Got it?’
He’s deluding himself, but it’s sweet. And hot. I nod, but I suspect it’s not a convincing act, because he ploughs on.
‘Sweetheart, I don’t have an answer for you about all of this because I want you to have the bright future you deserve without being hemmed in by any of us, even if that future involves you wanting to, I dunno, study art in Paris or find yourself in Tibet.’
I snort, because both of those scenarios are actually ridiculous. But I appreciate his generosity almost as much as I hate his insecurity.
As if Zach French and his broken, beautiful little family wouldn’t be the epitome of a bright future for any woman lucky enough to win their love.
Tibet can fuck right off. Honestly.
He’s still talking. ‘Obviously the stakes are high here—I don’t want to break the girls’ hearts again.
They wouldn’t survive it. But the reason I’m not coming on more strongly right now is purely that I need you to move at your own pace for your own reasons.
It’s not out of any reticence on my part. I’m all in.’
He delivers those last three words with a smile that’s open, and tentative, and hopeful, and I swear to God it fucking slays me.
I can’t handle it. I can’t handle the beauty and generosity of this man, nor the knowledge of what he must have gone through losing his wife, nor the astonishment that he still has the capacity to love, and to jump, and to put others first.
I could never imagine a man being more worthy of love than him. Could never conceive of a more beautiful soul. And honestly, in my short, self-absorbed life, I could never have imagined wanting to put someone else ahead of myself like I want do do with Zach.
I want to make his pain go away, and not just in the bedroom.
(Or his desk.)
(Or the shower.)
He seems to have some weird theory that I lighten his heart, and if that’s even one percent true then I want to deliver on that.
I want to lighten his load a little more every day of my life.
And, you know, have multiple Zach-French-branded orgasms while doing it.