Chapter 17
***Knight***
Dinner was tense. Kyrin was upset about losing the mare and Zander was stuck at work.
I was worried about both my brothers and my mood transferred into anger at Jamie when he stared at Aggie for too long again.
I didn’t want to show how petty I was being, so I just acted angry in general.
By the time dinner was over, Gracie was cranky and refusing to talk to anyone.
Aggie was quiet and picked at her food. It was an overall shitty experience.
We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Kyrin retreated to his rooms while Aggie and Gracie went up to get Gracie ready for bed. I stayed at the dinner table, considering how stabbing myself in the hand with my fork would be more fun than repeating the night.
A sense of loneliness crept in the way it did sometimes.
The house was too big, our family nearly decimated.
When we all lost ourselves in our own thing for too long, I started to understand just how small our family had become.
It was just the four of us. There was no one else.
We didn’t even have friends, really, just the people who worked for us.
Since Zella passed, we’d all retreated into ourselves more.
We spent more time apart than ever. I knew we were each mourning our sister’s passing, but I wanted to lose my mind and tear the walls of the house down some nights.
It was hard to sleep when the house was so quiet because it made me think of what it would be like one day, when the rest of us went.
It was a depressing thought, but I wasn’t above them from time to time.
When I left the table, I went up to my room and took a shower before settling at my desk. There was always work I could do, but I didn’t want to do work. I wanted human interaction. I wanted more of the time I’d had in the pool with Aggie and Gracie.
Even though I knew it was wrong, I didn’t stop myself from pulling up the security system and clicking on the set of cameras in Gracie’s side of the house. I panned through each camera until I found Gracie and Aggie sitting on Gracie’s bed, reading a book. I turned on the sound and listened in.
“And then Princess Gracie kicked the frog’s butt and realized she didn’t need to kiss him because she wasn’t interested in a prince with frog breath at that moment in her life.”
Gracie giggled. “That’s not what it says, Aggie.”
Aggie pretended to strain to see the words on the page. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it does say that. Can you read already?”
“Yes!”
“Darn.” Aggie closed the book and put it away. “Of course, I find the smartest six-year-old ever to nanny.”
“Will you tell me a story about the place you moved to? After your mommy went to heaven?”
My stomach dropped and I sat up, torn between listening in to learn more about Aggie and giving her the privacy she deserved. Ultimately, I couldn’t force myself to walk away from a chance to hear her talk about herself.
“Sure.” Aggie wrapped her arms around herself.
“So, I told you we moved to live close to my aunts, uncles, and what felt like hundreds of cousins. We lived on a farm, but it wasn’t a big farm.
It was tiny. Dad and I started with three chickens that just wandered onto the farm one day and never left.
We started selling eggs after a while. It was my job to go out and collect the eggs each morning. ”
“Uncle Ky showed me the chickens here.”
Aggie grinned. “I bet Uncle Ky doesn’t have a chicken anywhere near as mean as the one we had. I called her Mean Gene. Want to know why?”
Gracie giggled. “Yeah.”
“I had an Uncle Gene. I thought he was such an old fart. He was always yelling at the kids to be quiet. When my dad heard what I’d named that chicken, he just laughed and laughed.
Especially since the chickens were girls and I named her after a boy.
” Aggie brushed Gracie’s hair out of her face and continued quietly.
“Mean Gene would hide at the back of the chicken coop and wait for me to come gather the eggs. She was so quiet and sneaky. I never expected her to be there and she always was, waiting to peck my hands when I reached in to grab the eggs.”
“Why didn’t you stop getting the eggs?” Gracie yawned. “I wouldn’t have gone to get them.”
Aggie shrugged. “Sometimes, you have to do things that aren’t your favorite to get what you want.
I wanted fresh eggs for breakfast and for Dad to not gripe at me.
Eventually, I learned to wear oven mitts to gather the eggs.
Mean Gene couldn’t get me after that and eventually she got bored of her game. ”
“Where is she now?”
I smiled to myself as I watched Aggie’s eyes go wide in panic.
“...She’s...at another farm. Yep.” When Gracie looked away, Aggie made a face. “We definitely didn’t make chicken nuggets out of her.”
I laughed and kept watching Aggie, even once Gracie was asleep.
I watched as she tucked Gracie in and went through the process of turning off lights and pulling the door mostly closed.
I switched cameras and watched her walk through the house, into the kitchen, and then back up to her room with a bag of ice and a popsicle.
There were no cameras in her room and I sat there, itching to see more of her.
I eventually gave up and settled on top of my bed.
Staring at the ceiling, I played out scenarios that could possibly end with me in Aggie’s bed.
When nothing seemed like a good plan, I finally gave up on the idea completely and got back up to do some of the work I’d ignored during the day.
Only, when I sat down and rewound the footage from outside of Aggie’s room to be sure I hadn’t missed anything, I saw that I had.
I’d missed her stepping into the hallway outside of her room, completely naked and staring directly into the camera.
I jerked out of my chair and tried not to break into a sprint as I left my wing and headed across the house to her room.
When I got to her room, I braced myself with my hands on either side of the frame and was about to knock when the door was yanked open and Aggie was there, grabbing my shirt and pulling me into her room.
I lifted her into my arms and kicked the door shut behind me, groaning as she wrapped herself around me and kissed me. I cupped her naked ass and stumbled a few feet, instantly drunk on the taste of her. “How’d you know?”
She kissed my jaw and nibbled on my ear before kissing my mouth again. Her tongue danced against mine as her hands tangled in my hair. “I’m really good at computers, Knight. I was in the security system the first night before I fell asleep.”
I dropped her on top of her bed and yanked at my shirt. Staring down at her body, I swore and kicked out of my joggers. “Jesus, that’s sexy. Tell me how you did it.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me down on top of her, cradling me between her soft thighs.
I reached down to make sure she was ready before sinking my length into her in one hard stroke.
We both moaned and then I fucked her as she described to me how she’d hacked my system and watched me watching her.
“I told you. I’m good at computers.” She rolled over under me and braced herself as I thrust into her from behind. Between panting breaths, she told me off. “Your system was a joke. Holes as big as this fucking state. I could show you how to make it better.”
I held onto her shoulders and fucked her harder. “Nothing wrong with my system. No one else could crack it.”
Her core squeezed down on my length as she got closer to her orgasm. “Then appreciate how damn good I am.”
I reached around her hip to rub her clit and growled. “I’m fucking trying to!”
She jerked forward and I nearly dislocated my shoulder trying to get her back under me. She pushed me onto my back and crawled on top, taking me even deeper and leaned forward to press her breasts into my chest and kiss me. “Just want to see you when I come. So ridiculously hot.”
I gripped her ass in one hand and her hair in the other so I could hold her steady while I drove us both over the edge.
With our mouths hovering a breath apart, we both came hard together.
I watched her face twist in pleasure and then soften into something proud and happy.
I kissed her then, even as I was trying to catch my breath.
Holding her on top of me, I dropped my head back on her bed and let out a pleasure filled groan. “Holy shit.”
Aggie braced her hands on either side of my neck and bit her lip while staring down at me. “I was right to watch.”
I rolled us over and pinned her to the bed. “No one likes a braggart.”
She clenched her core around my still hard dick and grinned. “Someone likes me.”
I smiled down at her and dropped my mouth to softly kiss her. “He doesn’t have a brain. Makes sense.”
Laughing, she slapped my shoulder and then locked her arms around my neck. “I hate that you’re not completely terrible.”
“You’re not completely terrible yourself.
” I kissed her again and something shifted between us.
The teasing gave way to something softer, more intense.
It was something much harder to ignore when we finished and it was time for me to go back to my own room.
It was something that left me lingering just outside her door, making out with her when we should’ve been done.
It was that strange feeling that kept me up after I made it back to my room that night and it was that strange feeling that sent me running to the office the next day.