Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Dylan
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Shock froze him in place as his mind scrambled to make sense of what he was hearing. Because it couldn’t be Ethan, his best friend, who’d just walked in to see Dylan buried face first in his mother’s cunt. Surely the universe wasn’t that spiteful.
“Mom, what the fuck?”
Okay, maybe he was wrong and the universe was actually a petty bitch.
Fuck.
“Ethan. Oh, god.” Shoving at Dylan’s head, Samantha scrambled to sit up. Panic filled her eyes and her voice as she tugged at her shirt, clearly trying to cover herself up. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question. And is that… Dylan?”
Well, there was no hiding from it, so he might as well face his friend head-on. Sitting up, Dylan snagged Samantha’s panties from the floor where they’d fallen during her spanking and passed them to her. “Hey, Ethan. We, ah, didn’t know you were coming for a visit.”
Standing just a few feet from the couch, looking utterly, spectacularly stunned, Ethan looked from Dylan to his mother and back again. And Dylan’s stomach twisted into a knot as his best friend’s expression contorted into one of pure rage.
“You fucking asshole. Is this why you took that internship? So you could play fuckboy with my mother?”
“It’s not like that, Ethan, I swear.” The fuckboy part, anyway. He’d been on the nose with his accusation that Dylan had taken the internship to be close to Samantha.
The downside of having a friend who knew you inside and out, he supposed.
“What’s it like, then? Because to me, it looks exactly like…” Glancing around, Ethan frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure what the fuck it looks like. What’s with all the stuffed animals?”
“Oh my god.” Groaning, Samantha buried her face in her hands. “This could not possibly be any more humiliating.”
Every bit of Dylan’s attention shifted to his babygirl. “Sam, why don’t you go get changed while—” He caught himself just before the word Daddy slipped out. “While I clean up and talk to Ethan.”
Her head snapped up, fire flashing in her eyes and he knew before she even said anything he was about to have a fight on his hands. “I don’t need you to fight my battles, Dylan.”
Temper sparked in his chest, but he shoved it down. There were times for him to be a hardass, and there were times for him to be understanding. This was clearly the latter. “I know. I just thought you might prefer to have this conversation in some more… comfortable clothes.”
Sam glanced down, her cheeks turning bright red as she took in her clothes—or lack thereof. “Fuck my life,” she muttered, shoving up off couch and tugging at her shirt. “I’ll be right back.”
Ethan’s eyes went wide and for a moment, Dylan assumed he was simply shocked by the sight of his mother in nothing but a pair of knee-high socks, adorable panties, and a shirt that barely covered her stomach.
But then Dylan glanced over, and his heart dropped into his stomach at the sight of his babygirl’s ass and upper thighs.
Still blazing red and with hints of darker color coming through that were likely to be bruises, she looked exactly like what she was—a Little girl who’d recently been spanked and spanked hard.
Fuck.
“Mom, what the hell happened to you?” Striding forward, Ethan grabbed Sam’s upper arm, holding her in place while he surveyed the damage. “Did he do this to you? Did he—did he hurt you?”
“It’s not like that, honey.” Sam’s tone turned placating as she twisted out of her son’s grasp, turning so he could no longer see her reddened ass. “It was… We were…”
“Samantha.” He kept his tone even, as calm as possible given the thundering of his heart. “Go get changed. Now.”
Thankfully, she obeyed, hurrying off toward her bedroom, leaving Dylan alone to face his best friend’s wrath. “Look, E, this isn’t how—”
But his explanation was cut off by the sudden crunching of bone as Ethan’s fist plowed right into his face. Pain bloomed, hot and agonizing, and Dylan raised a hand to his nose, unsurprised when his fingers came away covered in blood.
“Feel better?”
Fury burned in eyes that were so much like Samantha’s it made Dylan more than a little uncomfortable to meet his gaze. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“With all due respect, Ethan, it’s Sam’s house. If she wants me to leave, she’s more than capable of telling me so.”
“Was this your plan all along?” Lip curling up in a snarl, Ethan’s hands tightened into a fist again and Dylan braced for another blow.
“Pretend to be my friend so you could get close to my mom? Tell me, did you target me specifically or were you just hoping you’d get placed with someone who happened to have a single, desperate mother you could take advantage of? ”
He let the anger come, let it burn hot enough to match Ethan’s. But before he could rip his friend a new one, another voice joined the fray.
“Is that how you see me?”
They turned as one toward Samantha, who had pulled on a pair of leggings over her “Little girl” outfit without even bothering to change her shirt. Hurt radiated off her, so palpable it made Dylan’s chest ache.
Before either of them could speak, however, her eyes went wide with shock. “Dylan! What happened to your face?”
“Nothing. It’s fine, baby, I promise.”
Fire flashed in her eyes as she rounded on her son. “What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t raise you to go around punching people in the face!”
Ethan’s fierce expression only faltered for a second before he jerked his chin up, again looking so much like his mother when she was settling in to be stubborn about something that Dylan nearly laughed.
“He hurt you, Mama! I saw the bruises! And your eyes are all red and puffy like you’ve been crying! ”
“Oh my god.” Color flooded Sam’s face. “He didn’t hurt me, Ethan. He just spanked me.”
“He… what?”
Under other circumstances, the pure confusion on his friend’s face would have had Dylan doubled over with laughter. But he was wise enough to know that laughing now would just piss off both mother and son, even more than they already were.
“He spanked me,” Sam repeated, her face still glowing hot and bright. “It was completely consensual, and that’s all I’m telling you, Ethan Samuel.”
“Consensual.”
Dylan watched as Ethan struggled to put the pieces together. They hadn’t discussed his kinky leanings in college, precisely because he’d never wanted Ethan to have any hint of what he was doing with his mother.
The road to hell, as they said, was paved with good intentions exactly like his.
“I need to sit down.” Ethan dropped hard onto the couch, his expression that of a shell-shocked soldier. “I just… give me a moment to process this.”
“Dylan, could you give us a few minutes?”
The absolute last thing he wanted to do was to leave his babygirl to deal with this on her own. Especially not when she was looking so damn miserable.
But he was also aware that his presence there wasn’t likely to make the conversation they needed to have any easier. “You sure, baby?”
Ethan visibly flinched, and Dylan had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Of all the things he’d witness today, hearing Dylan call his mother “baby” still made him wince?
“I’m sure. I want to talk to my son alone.”
“All right. I’ll go pick us up some pizzas for lunch.”
Gratitude flickered in her eyes. “Thank you. But, ah, you might want to wash your face, first.”
Everything in him wanted to go to her, to pull her into his arms and kiss all the stress and worry right out of her. And if he’d thought for a second it would actually work and not actually add to her stress, he would have.
So even though it felt like his heart was being ripped in two, he settled for a sharp nod before heading for the bathroom and leaving the woman he loved beyond all reason alone to fight her own battles.
Sam
This day could not possibly get any more humiliating.
Forcing herself to look over, she met her son’s eyes, so much like her own it made her chest ache to see the confusion and worry in them.
“Mom… what the fuck?”
Wrapping her arms around herself, she tried desperately not to wish it was Dylan holding her instead. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted you to find out about… this.”
If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted him to find out at all. In her fantasies, Dylan moved on at the end of summer and Ethan never knew what had gone on between them.
Between her and her Daddy.
God, what a fucking mess.
“What, exactly, is this?”
Dragging in a deep breath, she forced herself to step forward, to sit on the couch beside her son. It didn’t matter now that she hadn’t planned on telling him about her and Dylan, he knew now so the only option was to be as honest as possible. “Dylan and I are… involved.”
The look Ethan sent her was the very definition of withering. “Funny enough, I did pick up on that.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Ethan.”
He at least had the grace to look somewhat chagrined. “Sorry, Mama.”
“As I was saying. Dylan and I have been seeing each other for a couple weeks now.”
“So pretty much since he came to stay with you.”
“Pretty much. And I’m so, so sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry for? He’s the one who took advantage of you.”
Her temper spiked, and she had to fight to wrestle it back. “Right. Because I’m single and desperate.”
“Mama… that’s not what I meant.”
“But that’s what you said.” And the hurt of it still churned inside her. “Is that really how you see me, Ethan?”
“No, Mama, of course not. I just worry about you, is all. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I understand that. And I love you for worrying about me. But Dylan has made me happier than I’ve been in a very long time.”
“Jesus.” Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back against the couch. “I don’t understand. He beat you.”
She really, really did not want to have this conversation. But there didn’t seem to be a way around it. “He did not beat me, Ethan. He spanked me, and it was completely consensual.”
“I don’t want to know this,” Ethan mumbled.
“Well then maybe you should learn to knock before you come barging into people’s homes.” It was difficult to keep` the accusation out of her voice, hard as she tried.
“I thought this was my home, too.”
There was so much hurt in his voice, it threatened to shatter her heart. “Oh, baby. This will always be your home. You are always welcome here. Just… maybe call first. And knock.”
“You’re going to keep seeing him.”
She hadn’t realized until he’d said it that she’d already made up her mind. “I am, yes. And I’m sorry if that hurts you.”
Lifting his head with a sigh, he turned to face her, his expression unreadable. “And he really makes you happy?”
In a sea of difficult questions with even more difficult answers, that one was shockingly easy. “So fucking happy, Ethan.”
“All right.” Blowing out another breath, he nodded. “Then I guess I’ll try to be okay with it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“Can I ask one more thing, that I probably don’t actually want the answer to but I can’t seem to help myself?”
“What’s that?”
Confusion twisted his features again as he gestured at the soft pile on the floor. “What’s with all the stuffed animals?”
Where was a hole in the ground when a girl needed it? “We were having a Marvel movie marathon.”
“Okay, but where did they all come from? I’ve never seen like, ninety percent of these.”
“I keep them in my office.” And that was as much as she was willing to tell him. “Look, baby, if we keep going down this rabbit hole you are going to learn way more about your mother than you really want to know. For both our sakes, please, just leave it at that.”
“Fair enough.” A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “I know it’s barely noon but I think we could both use a drink.”
Daddy would be pissed if she got a drink without asking first. But there was absolutely no way she could tell Ethan that. So even though her ass still ached from the spanking she’d just gotten for breaking a rule, she forced a smile and rose from the couch. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”