19. Sunny
19
SUNNY
C arter and I went back and forth a few times this afternoon but finally decided on me arriving at his house around seven for dinner. I stood at his doorstep wringing my hands. Dad grilled me before leaving as to who I’d be with and where I was going, and I made it very clear to him that I wasn’t telling him and that I didn’t like how he insisted on knowing every detail. He was upset, but I slipped out when my Uber arrived.
“Sunny,” Carter breathed out in a deep exhale. He pulled me into his arms before I could say hello and kissed the crook of my neck, burying his face there. “How are you doing?”
When he pulled away, I met his gaze and felt gut sick again. I’d made the decision to come over and tell him about the baby right away. The guilt was consuming me and so was the nervous energy. I’d thrown up so many times this past weekend, I felt like my insides would fall out any second. I couldn’t keep carrying this, fearing his reaction.
“I’m better,” I told him, smiling, but it was a fake smile, plastic—imitation. I’d learned over the years to wear this professional smile on hard days and especially around my father. For all Carter knew, I had the flu and was healthy again. My news would probably gut him, but I hoped that somehow I could reach through the mess of fear and triggers to find the man who adored his baby that passed. The man who originally wanted a child and loved being a father.
“Come in,” he said, glancing over my shoulder like he expected someone to be watching us. He ushered me into his living room which was a bit messier than I remembered. Stacks of papers were strewn about on his coffee table, a few empty beer bottles beside them. There was a dress shirt and tie draped over the back of the sofa, shoes by the bar. Carter appeared to have been very busy or distracted by something.
“Can I get you a drink? Some wine? A seltzer?” His eyebrows rose as he shut the door and smiled at me, passing me to head toward his kitchen.
I pressed a hand to my belly, thinking of my little guy, and it made me smile. “Just water is fine.” After finding out in an overly dramatic way with Mom and Luna that I was pregnant, it started to dawn on me that I had been given a gift.
Most women my age would be horrified at an unplanned pregnancy, especially in my situation, where the father didn’t want kids necessarily. I, however, found it sweet and heartwarming. Life shifted in a very negative direction when Kira died. I lost my best friend. But I gained a baby. I felt like she sent me this gift, someone to love, someone to love me. Someone who couldn’t just desert and hurt me, and for that I was thankful.
“One water, coming up,” he said with a grin and vanished. I walked over to the couch and sat down, ignoring the mess. My heart was thumping hard against my chest. I’d come with the purpose of telling him about our unborn baby, and I had no clue how he was going to take it. When I got that text message he sent, telling me he loved me, I melted. I couldn’t keep this from him and risk tarnishing that love. He’d fought so hard to come back from the brink after his divorce and the heartbreak of it all. I had to give our relationship a fighting chance by being honest.
“Here we go,” he said, smiling as he plopped down. For a moment, his eyes scanned the mess around us, and I thought he looked panicked. I took my water and sipped while he scooped up the papers and stacked them, then set them aside on the end table. “My gosh, I’m sorry about the mess. I’ve been working on something…” His forehead crinkled and his eyes darkened.
“Hmm, what’s that?” I asked, swallowing the water and setting the glass down. It did nothing to calm my nerves at all. Mom told me to be bold and just spit it out, but I didn’t want this to be traumatic for him.
“Nothing too important to distract us. My gosh, I missed you so much I took the chance to call Rick.” Carter chuckled, but I saw the expression behind it. Dad must’ve reamed him again by the looks of it. Carter’s eyes were still stormy.
“How’d that go?” I asked with a wince. My hand rose to my hair, instinctively tangling in the soft waves. I hated that I was so easy to read, so predictable. Carter probably read me like a book. My hair twirling was so obviously a sign of my nervousness.
“About as well as you’d think. He had the nerve to talk about Hope…” Carter huffed and I clenched my jaw. The couch suddenly felt very uncomfortable. My back went rigid, muscles tensing. “Told me I ‘didn’t have a child so I wouldn’t know.’ I get it, he was angry, but my lord, the man can be very hurtful at times.”
My chest ached. I reached for him and rested my hand on his back as he continued to tell me in detail how he felt, which ripped my heart out.
“Rick just doesn’t understand how bad that kind of thing hurts. He never had his balls handed to him like that.” He rubbed his temples, then jerked his sleeves down into place. “When you go through something like that and fight back to some semblance of normalcy, anything can set you off. I’ve been burying myself in work all afternoon to try to shake that, but I’m seriously raging mad.”
I rubbed his back for a second, not even knowing what to say. Hearing the words spill out of his mouth, I knew I couldn’t bring up the baby right now. He’d already been upset by Dad’s selfish mean statements. How could I make it worse by bringing it up again? Anything I said could trigger worse emotions than this, and I of all people knew how that felt. Hearing from Mrs. Baker on Saturday brought up all those raw emotions. I felt like she’d just died right in front of me all over again.
“Wow, that was really awful of him. I’m so sorry he’s like that sometimes.” I never thought I’d have to apologize for my father’s bad behavior, but here I was hoping to smooth things over. I loved my dad, even though he was a total jerk sometimes. And I loved Carter, though he didn’t know it yet.
“Well, enough about me. You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about?” Carter turned the full force of his gaze on me, and I wilted like a three-day-old rose out of water. My plans were going up in smoke, and I scrambled to find something talk-worthy to discuss with him.
In my haste, my mind landed on: “I’m staying in LA.” The decision had been made by my mother, who insisted that I couldn’t raise a baby alone in Tampa. She convinced me that Luna and I could get an apartment, away from Dad’s prying, and she’d be here to help me through pregnancy and birth and maybe the first year. She was right; I would need her. But I didn’t see how I’d ever get through this without Dad’s meddling.
“You have just made me the happiest man alive,” Carter said, pulling me onto his lap. I had no choice but to straddle him with the way he forcibly handled my body. Not that I minded one bit. I missed him, and I craved being intimate with him. I just hoped it would’ve been celebratory after he accepted the truth and we vowed to raise the baby together as a family.
I chuckled to mask my own discouragement, but I fell into a kiss that warmed me to my core. When I pulled away I said, “And I’m going apartment hunting with Luna next weekend probably.”
“You don’t need an apartment. Stay with me…” Carter’s lips found mine again, definitely eager to get on with the pleasurable parts of this night.
The apartment idea with Luna wasn’t a suggestion; it was a must-have. If things went sideways with Carter, I had to have a backup plan. I’d be staying here in LA anyway, but I wasn’t going to go back to Mom and Dad’s house because I got dumped. How bad would Dad treat Carter then?
“Mmm,” I sighed as he sucked my pulse point and kneaded a breast. “I’d love to, but you’ll have to fight my dad to the death.” Both of us chuckled as the tension between us over my father’s reaction to Carter dissolved. We’d get through that part well enough, probably both on the sworn enemy list, but we’d manage. It was my secret I wasn’t sure if we’d survive.
“I’ll take that challenge if it means I win the prize.” Carter grinned against my lips as he started pulling my shirt up out of the waistband of my jeans. It wouldn’t be long before I’d have to wear an entirely different wardrobe, and every thought like that made this moment feel even more conflicting.
“Dinner…” I mewled, as he reached up my shirt, pulling my bra to the side.
“It’ll be ready in twenty minutes. We have time.” When he lifted my shirt and shoved his head into it to suck a nipple, I gasped and giggled. “Mmm, you taste good,” he said, pulling back. “Dinner can wait.”
My core tightened as he sucked my nipple into his mouth again, swirling his tongue around its hard peak. My hand rested on his shoulders as I grinded against him and rolled my hips.
“Carter,” I breathed his name, and reached for his belt buckle. I undid his pants and slid my hand inside his boxer briefs.
His erection was rock-hard against my palm and I stroked him slowly, loving the way he pulsed in my hand. “Bedroom,” he mumbled between each kiss along my collarbone. I let him lead me by the hand to his bedroom, only half hoping he wouldn’t notice anything different in my body. I’d never been pregnant before. I didn’t know if a man could tell or not. Carter folded the sheets back, revealing clean white linens that begged to be stained with our passion.
He undressed me, and I was glad I’d worn a lace thong and matching bra to feel sexy just in case this happened. He tore my bra off as if it were on fire, and his face dipping between my breasts had me panting. I dug nails into his shoulders to quell the noise I wanted to let out as he pushed me down on the bed and I bounced. He stripped as I shimmied out of my panties, and then he was back on top of me, between my thighs lapping at my juices.
“Carter,” I moaned his name, thrusting my hips up to meet his mouth as he worshiped every inch of me. His tongue swirled around my clit, drinking me in. His moans of pleasure matched mine.
A thought crossed my mind about protection or lack thereof, but it was fleeting as he slid two long fingers inside me. My internal muscles contracted around his digits, welcoming him home like it’d been years instead of days since he’d last been with me.
“God, Carter,” I moaned, and arched my back as he added a third finger. My core may as well have been on fire. He knew all the right buttons to push and twist and pull to make me writhe underneath him in pure ecstasy, and we hadn’t even gotten to the main course yet.
He chuckled against my core as he kissed his way up my sopping wet pussy across my body to my neck and stopped to taste my pulse. “You’re so responsive, Sunny.” He then flipped me over onto all fours, and I moaned as his hard length rubbed against my entrance. “Take me,” he grunted in my ear, nibbling on my earlobe.
I reached back and guided his length into me, moving him in and rocking against his invading dick. He was so hot and hard against my insides, the walls of which pulsed to accept every inch of him.
“Oh, God yes,” I moaned as he slid deep inside me with a gritted groan. In the back of my mind, I knew I should tell him to wear a condom, that not doing so would reveal something I didn’t think he was ready for, but the feeling of his flesh against mine was too exquisite. I craved it so much.
Inch by delicious inch, Carter took me, until we were linked by more than just our bodies. Our hips met with a wet slap as he started finding my rhythm. He moaned and thrust even harder into me from behind, and I grunted as my orgasm rocked my whole body. I tingled all over. His name bounced off the walls of his bedroom uttered by my lips. My body convulsed and pulsed, and when the sensations passed, he slowed and pulled out.
I almost lay down, worn out from the energy exerted, but he held me there, lowering his face to my core where he drank me in again. His tongue swirled in my juices, coating his face, letting his beard scratch my sensitive skin. It was erotic and pleasurable, and when he slid his fingers back into me, I came almost instantly. The second one more powerful than the first.
“Carter,” I whimpered, my keening so loud I was sure the neighbors would call the cops. Carter ignored me though, lapping up every drop of my juices and then some. He finally took pity on me as I bucked and arched against his skilled tongue, flipping me over onto my back again.
His face was a mask of desire and need as he positioned himself at my entrance, but paused. His chest was heaving; I could read the expression in his eyes. A knowing passed between us as he backed away and glanced toward the nightstand, but I reached down and stroked him.
“Allow me,” I told him, still half drunk from ecstasy. I sat up and he stood next to the bed as I took his dick into my mouth, cupping his balls in one hand.
“Sunny,” he hissed as he arched into me. “Oh God.”
I increased my speed, bobbing my head up and down his shaft, milking him with my mouth, and when I sensed he was close, I sucked even harder. His face contorted in an almost painful expression and then he came, shooting his warm, wet load down my throat and onto my tongue. He tasted salty with a hint of tanginess. I swallowed every drop, drinking him in just as he’d done to me moments before.
Carter collapsed next to me, panting and sated. His eyes were hooded as he gazed at me with complete and utter adoration in his eyes. “Wow” he said, resting his forehead against mine. “I love you.”
I wrapped my arms around his chest and caught my breath, thankful for dodging the condom question for now. “You’re incredible…And I…” I couldn’t say it yet. I did love him, but it felt horrible saying so while keeping this secret.
“Yeah?” he asked, and I pressed my eyes closed.
“I’m starving,” I admitted falsely, but he kissed my forehead and popped off the bed.
“Say no more. I’ll get dinner. You stay there.”
He slid his boxers on and walked out while I curled into a ball on my side and pulled the blankets over me. I was kidding myself if I thought telling Carter would ever be easy, but I had to respect that his emotions were raw today after that talk with my dad. I felt horribly guilty, but I was so afraid to hurt him. I had to regroup and ask Mom what she thought about it.
And I had to pray Dad didn’t find out in the meantime.