Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
KNIGHT
My dick is screaming for release, but I ignore the sensation, readjusting my hold on my wife as she sleeps on my chest. This morning has been one of the worst I’ve ever experienced.
Leaving her to sleep while I went downstairs to work out was physical agony, my heart screaming to go back to her the moment I stepped out of our room without her.
Not seeing her eyes open or feeling her perfect body wrapped around me was painful. Cooking and eating alone reminded me of how barren my childhood was, and seeing the hurt in her eyes when she realized what I’d done made me want to claw at my own skin just to make the pain go away.
She locked the bathroom door and hid herself away from me. She cried so many tears today that the memory of the sound of her sobbing in the bakery feels like I’m being stabbed in the gut. But hearing her tell Etta that she doesn’t matter to me broke my heart into a million pieces.
Before her, I never really cared how I impacted other people.
I’ve always been happy alone, so considering someone else has honestly never really occurred to me.
I hold affection for my brothers and Tori.
I want them to be healthy and a part of my life, but I’ve never assumed that anything I did could affect that.
My doll is the reason I’m happy. She’s the reason I get up, the reason I continue to breathe, the reason I understand and feel love.
She’s made me a husband, and on our first day as a family of three, I let her down.
I hurt her. I made her feel like she wasn’t the place where my heart starts and stops.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. I hope I don’t, because then I’ll spend my existence making sure she never feels it again.
I wish I knew the words to fix this, but I don’t. I’ve done everything that I know how to do. I went to her and pledged myself to her. I’ve cared for her, married her, built her a house, and put a baby in her body.
I don’t know how to do or be more, but she needs me to be.
I thought that putting her needs above my own would show her that she was my priority, and that I would rather make myself uncomfortable than her, but that’s not what happened.
Somehow, I hurt her so badly that she didn’t want my touch, didn’t want my presence, didn’t want me.
And I don’t know what to do to make things right.
All I can think of is keeping her close, but I don’t know if she even wants that now. Did I destroy the only thing I’ve ever truly needed?
Questions and unknowns circle through my mind as the water cools around us.
I don’t want to get out of the tub, but I can’t stay in the water if it’s cold, if she could get cold.
Carefully lifting her off my dick, I push up to my feet and climb out, wrapping her sleepy body in a towel before I carry her into the bedroom and place her under the comforter.
“No,” she whines, reaching for me as I hurriedly blot the water from my skin and climb in beside her. It’s barely 1400 hours, but she’s tired, and if she wants to sleep, then I need to be with her.
Her brow furrows as her eyes start to blink open less than an hour later. Before she’s fully awake, she sits upright, her eyes wild until they land on me.
“I fell asleep?” she questions, slowly lowering herself to the mattress on her side, facing me.
“Yes.”
“I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
“Then sleep.”
“I’m sor—” She starts, but I cut her off, not wanting to hear her apologize for something that’s my fault.
“No.”
“Knight, I—”
“No,” I cut her off again. “Never again.” I don’t really know what I’m vowing, but I know I won’t ever fail her again. I won’t lose her.
Shuffling closer, she rests her head on my biceps, and I curl my arms around her, pinning her to my chest and hating that it doesn’t feel close enough.
Neither of us moves again for a while, just lying together, our skin connected. My dick is hard, and I’m sure her cunt is wet, but this isn’t about sex. At least not yet. Reaching down, I touch the rings I put on her finger, twisting them around until the stone is sitting on top.
The air between us that usually feels perfect is thick, coating us in an acrid humidity that I don’t know how to dissipate. I’m sure other people would know what to say or do to fix this, but I don’t, and for the first time, I hate that I’m not normal.
All I feel capable of admitting is that this isn’t right, we’re not right, but I don’t know how to change that.
“Tell me what to do,” I ask.
“What?”
“I did this. I did this, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know,” I admit, hating how pathetic I sound when I should be the strong one, the protector, the caregiver.
“Do you still want us?” she questions.
Her words make me feel sick. I don’t know if she means us as in our marriage, our life, or us as in her and the baby. My baby.
“You’re mine,” I pant, feeling the first hint of certainty since she opened her eyes this morning.
“I know it’s stupid, I know it’s irrational, but our days start…” She trails off, her voice thickening with tears I cannot watch fall.
Rolling her beneath me, I cage her in, my arms on either side of her head, my legs pinning her to the mattress.
“They start with me fucking you in the gym. They start with having breakfast while my cum drips out of your cunt. They start with me taking care of you, and washing every inch of your skin in the tub. They start with me watching you put on your underwear and knowing that I’ll spend the rest of the day wishing we were alone so I could see it again.
Our days start the same way, and today was wrong.
So wrong. But it’ll never happen again. Never. ”
Suddenly, I know what I’m promising to do, and how to do it. I’m promising to make every single day of the rest of our forever as perfect as the most perfect one. It’ll be hard to do, but that’s my life’s work, that’s my mission, and I’m happy to vow to it, to devote my life to it.
“I love you, and I love our baby. I hope you can forget today ever happened, because I never want to see you cry again. I never want a locked door between us. I never want to feel your pain and know I’m the cause of it.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry I changed things that will never change again.
I’m sorry that I made you feel, even for a moment, that my life doesn’t depend on yours, that I could exist without you, that I’m even a person when I’m not touching you.
I’m sorry, Doll, because you and our baby are the reason I breathe, the reason I’m here on this earth.
You’re the reason, the only reason, all the reason. You’re everything.”
Nodding, her hand slides over the back of my neck, pulling me down until my lips find hers. When we kiss, our mouths become one, tongues entwined as I search for what I lost, silently promising to find every single piece of us that broke today and to put it back together so it’ll never break again.
Pushing her legs up, I guide my dick inside of her, fucking her in slow, deep thrusts. Kissing her, we move together, not racing toward completion, just enjoying the closeness.
“Knight,” she whines against my mouth.
“Yes, Doll?”
“More. I need more,” she pants, heat flashing in her eyes as her nails dig into my shoulders.
Palming the back of her thigh, I lift her, changing the angle of my thrusts until her chest hitches and her mouth falls open on a silent gasp. Keeping her in that position, I roll my hips, grinding into her until she screams, her body gyrating as an orgasm barrels through her.
It doesn’t take long for my own release to surge forward, and I pump my cum into her channel, filling her as her body drags me closer. Holding my weight off her, I claim her mouth, and feel a little of the tension I’ve been feeling fade away.
“I love you,” I tell her. “Both of you.”
“We love you too,” she says, but even though I can hear the sincerity in her words, I can still see the lingering pain in her eyes.
We laze in bed for the rest of the day, only leaving our bedroom for dinner, then immediately retreating upstairs again.
My doll clings to me, letting me carry her without even the pretense of wanting to walk.
I love that she truly seems as desperate for closeness as I feel, but a new feeling that I’m associating with guilt festers low in my stomach because I’m the reason she’s feeling this way.
It killed me to leave her upstairs this morning, but she’s creating a life inside of her, and she needs all the rest she can get. Carrying her down to the gym and disturbing her just so I could keep her close seemed selfish because Doll and our baby’s needs have to outweigh mine, no matter what.
I barely slept last night after the doctor told us that Octavia is pregnant. It’s everything I’ve wanted since I saw her, but alongside the male pride and happiness that she’s carrying my child came an unexpected awareness. What if our child is like me?
I am particular, peculiar. Different. I’m not like most other people, and even though I don’t see that as a failure, I am aware that my life, both as a child and as an adult, hasn’t replicated those of my brothers or Tori.
I don’t have a relationship with my biological family.
Until I moved to Rockhead Point, the only person in my life I had any kind of bond with was Saxon, and he’s my colleague.
Seeing Octavia and identifying her as my mate, wife, and mother of my children changed everything for me, and now that I know what love feels and tastes and smells like, I want that for our child.
I want the baby Octavia is building in her body to feel the full spectrum of life’s emotions. I want them to know family and friends, and someday find their mate and know that is who their life was driving them toward.
But can I give our child all of that if my main priority is me and my wants and needs?