24. Haley
— · —
Haley
I woke up to the feeling of warmth pressed against my back and something very hard pressed against my ass.
For a moment I just lay there, disoriented, trying to remember where I was and why there was a man in my bed. Then the memories of last night came flooding back.
James’s mouth on mine. His fingers inside me. The way he had held me while I fell asleep, his breath warm against my neck.
Not a dream. Actually real.
I shifted slightly, testing the situation, and felt his cock twitch against me through his pants. He was still asleep, his breathing deep and even, one arm draped heavy across my waist.
How had everything changed so fast?
Twenty-four hours ago I was standing in my kitchen convinced he didn’t want me. Now I was waking up in his arms with the evidence of exactly how much he wanted me pressing insistently against my backside.
Life was weird.
I checked the clock on my nightstand. Just past six. Lily wouldn’t be up for at least another hour, probably longer after the exhausting day she’d had yesterday.
Which meant I had time.
I pressed back against him, rolling my hips in a slow grind. His arm tightened around my waist, a low sound rumbling in his chest.
“Haley.” His voice was rough with sleep. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” I did it again, feeling him harden further against me. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re grinding your ass against my dick at six in the morning.” His hand gripped my hip, holding me still.
“Is it bothering you?”
“It’s making this very hard.” He groaned as I pushed back again despite his grip. “And I mean that literally.”
“Oh, I know it’s hard.” I reached back and palmed him through his pants, feeling the length of him twitch under my touch. “I can feel exactly how hard it is.”
“Fuck.” His hips jerked involuntarily. “Haley, I’m serious. You need to stop.”
I rolled over to face him, then kept rolling until I was straddling his hips, my hands braced on his chest. His eyes flew open, dark and hungry in the early morning light.
“Make me.”
“Fuck, Haley.” His hands found my thighs, gripping hard. “Stop that.”
“Come on.” I rolled my hips, dragging myself along the length of him. “Why are you playing hard to get? You wanted this last night. You want it now. I can feel how much you want it.”
“Because I’ve waited years to have a taste of you.” His jaw was tight, his whole body tense with restraint. “And I’m not going to rush it. I’m not going to have our first time be a quick fuck before your daughter wakes up.”
I leaned down to kiss his neck, tasting the salt of his skin. “It’s okay. I can be fast when I need to be.”
“That’s exactly my point.” He grabbed my hips and held me still, his breathing ragged.
“I don’t want to go fast. I want to take my time with you.
I want to learn every inch of your body, figure out what makes you scream, what makes you beg.
I want to spend hours making you come before I even think about being inside you. ”
Well. That was quite a speech for six in the morning.
“Ugh.” I dropped my forehead against his chest in frustration. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
I started to climb off his lap, resigned to a cold shower and a lot of frustration. His hands tightened on my hips before I could move.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t taste you now.”
Before I could process what he meant, he was moving. His hands gripped my thighs and lifted, and suddenly I was being dragged up his body, past his chest, his shoulders, until my knees were on either side of his head and my core was hovering directly over his face.
“James!” I grabbed the headboard to steady myself. “What are you doing?”
He looked up at me from between my thighs, his eyes dark with want. “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve lost your mind.”
“Probably.” His fingers hooked in the waistband of my panties. “Take these off.”
“James, you don’t have to-”
“Take them off, Haley.”
There was an edge to his voice that made my stomach flip. I lifted up enough for him to drag my panties down my legs, kicking them off somewhere behind me. Then I was bare from the waist down, hovering over his face in nothing but the t-shirt I had thrown on after he carried me to bed.
He stared up at me like I was a feast and he was starving.
“Has anyone ever done this to you before?” His breath was hot against my inner thigh.
I felt my cheeks flush. “No.”
His fingers traced patterns on my thighs, getting closer but never quite touching where I needed him. “Has anyone ever put their mouth on this pretty pussy?”
The flush spread down my neck. “No. Caleb never - he said he didn’t like it.”
James went completely still beneath me.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice was hard, furious. “You were married to that asshole for five years and he never once-”
“It’s fine. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It’s not fine.” He gripped my thighs hard enough to leave marks. “It’s the opposite of fine. That selfish piece of shit got to have you for five years and he couldn’t be bothered to make you feel good?”
“James-”
“No.” He pulled me down, closer to his mouth. “I need you to understand that I am going to spend the rest of my life making up for every way he failed you. Starting right now.”
His tongue touched my pussy and I nearly collapsed.
It was just a single lick, from my entrance to my clit, but it sent shockwaves through my entire body. I grabbed the headboard tighter, my thighs shaking.
“Oh god.”
“You taste incredible.” He licked me again, slower this time. “Fuck, Haley.”
He circled my clit with his tongue and I whimpered. He sealed his lips around my clit and sucked, and I made a sound I had never heard come out of my own body before.
“Do it again.”
He sucked harder and I groaned, louder this time, my hips jerking involuntarily.
“You’re hovering.” He gripped my thighs and tried to pull me down. “Stop hovering and sit on my face.”
“I don’t want to suffocate you.”
“I would die happy.” He licked a long stripe through my folds. “Now sit down, Haley. Let me taste you properly.”
I lowered myself slightly, still holding most of my weight on my knees. He growled in frustration and gripped my hips, yanking me down until I was fully seated on his face.
Oh. Oh fuck.
His tongue was everywhere. Licking through my folds, circling my clit, dipping inside me. He ate me like he was starving for it, like there was nowhere else he would rather be, like my pussy was the single greatest thing he had ever tasted.
No one had ever touched me like this. No one had ever made me feel like my pleasure was the most important thing in the world.
“James.” My voice came out broken. “Oh god, James.”
He moaned against me, the vibration making my thighs shake. His hands gripped my ass, holding me in place while his tongue did things I didn’t even know a tongue could do.
“I can’t - I’m going to-”
He pulled back just enough to speak, his voice rough.
“Sit the fuck down, Haley.”
Holy shit. That was hot.
I obeyed, pressing down against his mouth, and he rewarded me by sucking my clit while sliding two fingers inside me. The dual sensation was too much. I felt the orgasm building at the base of my spine, felt my whole body start to tense.
His voice was muffled against my pussy. “Come on my face. Let me feel you.”
I cried out his name, probably too loud, definitely too loud, but I couldn’t stop, or control anything my body was doing.
He worked me through it, his tongue gentling as the aftershocks faded, until I was slumped forward with my forehead pressed against the wall and my legs shaking so badly I could barely hold myself up.
Then I heard it.
The baby monitor on the nightstand crackled to life, and Lily’s voice came through, sleepy and confused.
“Mommy?”
“Fuck.” I scrambled off James’s face, nearly falling off the bed in my haste. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
James was laughing as I grabbed a pair of shorts from the laundry basket in the corner, trying to shove my legs into them while simultaneously running for the door.
“This isn’t funny!”
“It’s a little funny.” He sat up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, looking far too pleased with himself. “Go. I’ll make breakfast.”
I made it to Lily’s room in record time, slightly out of breath and probably looking like I had just done exactly what I had just done. She was sitting up in her bed, rubbing her eyes, her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest.
“Morning, baby.” I sat on the edge of her bed and smoothed her hair back. “Did you sleep okay?”
“I had a dream about clouds.” She looked up at me with those big eyes. “Can we have clouds as pets?”
“We’ll see what we can do.”
I got her dressed and supervised the teeth-brushing. By the time we made it to the kitchen, the smell of coffee was already filling the apartment.
James was standing at the counter, fully dressed now, pouring coffee into a mug. There was a bowl of cereal already set out at Lily’s usual spot, and a plate of cut fruit beside it.
He looked up when we walked in and smiled, and my heart did a complicated thing in my chest.
“Morning, ladies.” He pushed the coffee mug toward me. “Wasn’t sure how you take it, so I left it black.”
“Black is perfect.” I wrapped my hands around the mug and took a sip.
Hot. The coffee was actually hot.
Usually by the time I dealt with Lily’s morning routine, whatever I had poured myself had gone cold in the mug. But James had timed it perfectly, had everything ready exactly when we walked in.
Everything was different.
Lily climbed into her chair and stared at the bowl of cereal suspiciously. “Where’s the milk?”
“Coming right up.” James grabbed the milk from the fridge and poured it over her cereal with a flourish. “There you go. Anything else?”
“The fruits look funny.”
“That’s because they’re special fruits.” He pushed the plate closer to her. “See? This one’s a star. And this one’s a heart. And this one’s supposed to be a dinosaur but it didn’t turn out great.”
Lily picked up the lopsided dinosaur-shaped piece of melon and studied it seriously. Then she giggled, the sound bright and happy in the morning quiet.
“It looks like a blob.”
“A blob dinosaur.” James nodded solemnly. “Very rare. Very delicious.”
She popped it in her mouth, still giggling, and I felt my chest tighten.
He was so good with her. So natural, like he had been doing this for years instead of just a few days. He knew how to talk to her, to make her laugh, to turn a simple breakfast into an adventure.
Lily loved having him around. I could see it in the way she looked at him. She had never been this comfortable with anyone outside of me and Megan.
James slid into the chair next to her and started asking about the rabbit’s birthday party that apparently still needed planning. Lily launched into an elaborate explanation involving guest lists and cake flavors and the ongoing drama between Mr. Whiskers and someone named Princess Sparkle.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture.
James looked up at the sound of the shutter, raising an eyebrow.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing.” I looked at the photo on my screen. “Just wanted to remember this.”
I set it as my wallpaper before I could talk myself out of it.
None of this should make sense.
A week ago I was a single mom barely holding it together, terrified that my ex-husband was going to destroy everything I had built. Now I was standing in my kitchen watching James Sinclair cut fruit into shapes for my daughter while the taste of his mouth was still lingering on my lips.
It shouldn’t work. It was too fast, too tangled up in years of history and family drama and unanswered questions.
But sitting here now, watching Lily laugh at James’s terrible dinosaur shapes, feeling the warmth of the coffee in my hands and the lingering pulse of pleasure between my thighs, I couldn’t find it in myself to care about any of that.
It fit perfectly.