Chapter 15 #2
“That’s bullshit. No, I never wanted to have kids with any of the women I was sleeping with before…
or are you talking about what happened today?
Who wants to stand next to a screamer? And I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t cute, no matter what the mother thought.
I feel pretty bad about that,” he admitted.
“Why wouldn’t I be interested in a baby? ”
“When Iker was going through the stages of fetal development at Rashelle’s wedding, you nearly fell asleep on the table,” I reminded him.
“He went on for about an hour while we were waiting for our turn at the buffet. Those pigs in blankets weren’t enough to hold me,” Silas explained. “I don’t have anything against kids.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really,” he answered. “Don’t assume stuff about me.”
The front door slammed. “Boris is coming to eat,” Lyra announced, and the two of them jockeyed for a place at the table.
Dinner wasn’t ready and anyway, both of them had filthy hands, so they were sent to the basement while we finished cooking.
I heard her telling him about softball as they went down the stairs.
And during the meal, our guest was treated to an almost moment-by-moment breakdown of the day’s assessment. “It’s so fun. I wish you could play it,” she lamented, and Silas had a different idea for him.
“How about the two of us start building those shelves for your rocks?” he offered.
“After dinner, let’s work out how big you want them and draw up a plan.
” The three of them left me to the dishes, which I didn’t mind because I got to listen to their discussion of Boris’s dream room and Lyra’s, too.
His would be purple, but also painted (somehow) with the northern lights, and hers would be green.
We’d been working on that, buying fabric and talking about painting some of the furniture (painting it green).
If I had a baby, it wouldn’t need its own room at first, but once he or she grew and became mobile, how would Silas and Lyra respond to that?
They probably wouldn’t want to listen to crying at night, and they probably wouldn’t want to deal with extra mess…
well, neither of them cared too much about mess, but having an infant and then a small child in this house would obviously be a large change and intrusion.
There were so many issues to think about.
I wouldn’t jump headlong into something as important and life-altering as this would be, and it wouldn’t only alter my life, either.
I thought that I should discuss it with someone, and the obvious person was Silas.
I looked over to the table, where he was carefully sketching Boris’s room and laughing about how he was a terrible artist. Lyra eventually took over the planning.
“More purple?” she asked her friend, and nodded seriously like she’d already known what he would answer.
Eventually, our guest had to go home, because his grandma called to lure him with a dessert she’d made out of chocolate, toffee, and saltines. Two members of our household accompanied him to sample it for themselves, but Silas came back in a minute.
“They invited Ly to sleep over, camping out in the living room. Ok with you?”
“Me? Sure,” I agreed. The kids had done the same thing here, too. As he went to find her sleeping bag, I called, “I need to talk to you about something.”
He poked his head into the kitchen. “Something bad?”
“Something important to me,” I answered.
I heard him thump upstairs and then back down, and he was moving extremely fast. Then the front door slammed closed but it was only a second or so later that it opened again, and he reappeared in the kitchen. “What?” he asked me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been thinking about the future,” I explained. “A lot about it.”
“Ah, Christ on a cracker. I knew this was too good to last.” He sat down heavily in one of the sturdy chairs that his grandma had purchased. “When are you leaving?”
“No, I don’t want to leave,” I said.
“Shit! Why did you scare me like that?” He exhaled hard. “Ok, so what’s the problem?”
“I want to do something and if it works, it will affect you and Lyra a lot.” Now I took a deep breath in. “I want to have a baby.”
“What…” His blue eyes fastened on my stomach. “What?”
I started to explain. “Having kids is something I always dreamed about,” I said. “I thought that I would marry Dax and start a family with him, but it didn’t work out. Thank goodness,” I added. “He would have been a terrible father and I would have stuck my child with him for life.”
“Yeah, having a crappy father—so who’s going to be the dad now?”
“I’m considering that. This is all very preliminary,” I said. “I’ve looked into sperm donation, for example, but—”
“What?” The previous times he’d said that word, he’d sounded confused. Now he sounded angry, which I didn’t understand.
So I started to explain how I could obtain donor materials, but Silas held up both big hands to signal me to stop. “What the hell is wrong with my sperm?’
I stared. “I don’t…nothing, probably,” I answered slowly.
“Damn straight,” he told me. “Damn straight, there’s nothing wrong with them!” He still seemed furious.
“Have I offended you?” I wondered.
“Yeah, you have,” he told me. “Do you think I’d be like your noodle of an ex? Do you think that I’d cheat and give you a fake diamond? Do you think that I’d act like my own father and try to forget that I had kids?”
“Of course not!” Now I was getting angry. “You’re nothing like either of those guys. All I have to do is watch you with Lyra and Boris and I know how you’d be as a dad. I also know that you wouldn’t lie and hurt me, and I trust you completely!”
“Good! So, if you want a baby, you should take my sperm. What’s wrong with what I’ve got?”
“Nothing! But I can’t use them.”
“Why not? Yeah, you can,” he answered himself. “Yeah, absolutely. You’ll have mine.”
“No. No, I can’t but I’m sure yours are amazing,” I assured him.
“They are and it’s a great plan.” He nodded, totally convinced.
I had a sudden flashback to our conversation months before, when he’d wanted me to come and live in this house with him and his sister, and I had argued against it.
He’d managed to convince me then, and it had worked out.
But that wasn’t going to happen again now.
“Silas, I don’t think you’re considering the problems with this idea, like—”
I didn’t finish that thought, because he suddenly got to his feet and he looked extremely...determined?
“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.
“We,” he told me. “We are doing it. If you want a baby? We’re going to go give you one.”
“I’m not…” My jaw dropped as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Silas. Oh, wow. Oh.”
“All right.” He stepped toward me.
“You want to make a baby? At this moment?”
He undid the top of his jeans, which I took as a yes.
“Just think for a minute…” But I was also having trouble with thinking. “Um, ok, we need to…” His zipper came down. “Silas, please, you’re making this very difficult!”
He walked to me and put his hands on my shoulders, and the heat of his palms only kindled the fire that seemed to be burning inside of me. He bent and looked me in the eyes. “Are you ready, Camille?”
And I heard myself say it: “Yes. Absolutely.”
The next thing I knew, my arms were around his neck and I was kissing him. Or maybe it was more correct to say that he was kissing me, because I found myself crushed against his body and his mouth was doing things to mine…
I couldn’t breathe but that didn’t seem to be a problem for me.
I still wasn’t thinking, which I didn’t care about at all.
His tongue and his hands made the fire inside me burn hotter and hotter.
I clung onto him and wrapped my leg around his calf to try to get tighter and closer, and I felt his bare chest and arms—I needed to be bare as well.
I jerked my mouth away. “Take this off!” I ordered, and started to struggle with my sweater. “Get it off!”
“We’ll strip you down shortly.” He picked me up and bolted toward the stairs.
We had a little problem about halfway up when his jeans fell down, but he powered through to his bedroom.
Then we did take everything off, those jeans and my sweater, and my shirt underneath, and the undershirt under that.
Then he pulled down the pants I’d worn to work, the leggings, and the two pairs of socks.
Octavia was still complaining about the extreme heat in the office so it was subzero in there.
He removed all of it, until I was just in my bra and underwear, and then his eyes lit up.
I heard him say something about crackers as he grabbed me again, and this time?
I could feel him against me, his warm skin and hard muscle beneath it.
I felt his touch on my own skin, molding and massaging.
He unclipped my bra and I actually moaned when he palmed my breasts.
He stroked and then squeezed gently and then harder when I pressed myself toward him.
It was happening fast and I wanted it to go even faster. I wanted to feel all of him, immediately, inside me. When his hand moved down, past the top of my underwear, my knees got week and I clung to his arms so that I wouldn’t fall.
“Cammie, this has been a long time coming,” he said. His voice was hoarse and he was also breathless. “I’m going to try to take even longer to come, but hell, I want you pretty damn bad.”
“Yes,” I gasped back. Now he was rubbing me, his fingers rhythmically moving over my clit. I started to shake and I got the idea that I wasn’t going to be very long, either.
“Enough with the underwear.” He peeled off mine and his own and the sight of him, even in the half-darkness of the room, was actually shocking. The sheer size…oh. “We’re going to be great,” he told me, and tossed me onto the bed.