Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Forest
Sometime late in the morning, Josephine nudges me awake. “Aunt BeeBee says breakfast is ready.” Her hair a wild mess, with pillow creases on her right cheek, wearing someone else’s T-shirt—Isaiah’s, is my guess, since it hangs down to her ankles.
I reach to wake Autumn, finding the blankets cold, when Josephine skips off into the din of voices coming from the kitchen.
Though I’d love to have woken beside the angel, it’s for the best that Josephine didn’t catch us sleeping together.
Not before Autumn and I sit down to have a serious discussion about our strange relationship.
The sun streams brightly through the double French doors that lead to the backyard, and I find everyone either eating at the large kitchen table, on the stools at the island, or around the coffee table in the living room.
Autumn stands at the stove, holding Benjamin as she transfers a few hot pancakes from the pan onto a platter.
With this many mouths to feed, they’re gone in an instant.
She’s still wearing my hoodie from last night, her legs bare, and I’m tempted to slip my hands beneath the material to grip her hips.
I absolutely would, if I could get away with doing so in front of so many watchful eyes.
I reach for Benjamin to free her arms instead, wanting to tip her chin up so I can kiss her good morning. “What time did you wake up?”
“About an hour ago,” Autumn says, pouring more pancake batter into the pan. If I can figure out how to lock her down, I could wake up to a scene like this every morning and vice versa. I’d love to get the chance to cook for her and our children.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask.
“Not great,” she says with a shrug.
“Oh.” I glance away. She probably needed her sisters’ comfort more than she did mine. What was I thinking, dragging her into the sewing room? “Sorry.”
She tugs my pajama top to get my attention. “Because of my dad. Not because of you.”
“Oh,” I say again, my tone lifted. I slept fucking amazingly with her in my arms, despite the floor being hard beneath the pallet.
“Here,” she says, loading a paper plate with more pancakes and sliced fruit than I can eat, drizzling them with maple syrup. “For you and Benny to share.”
Impulsively, I lean in and peck her lips, making her breath hitch with surprise. I take the plate and settle on the living room carpet, beside Josephine and Sebastian. Leaning back against the couch, I arrange Benjamin to sit between my knees and hand him half a banana.
“Auntie LaLa says we can go see Grandpa today,” Ivy’s six-year-old little sister, Daphne, says, speaking of Shayla.
As the biological children of Eden and Martin, Daphne and her twin, Amelia, don’t share blood with the Fischers—only Ivy through Lainey, thus, through Shayla.
But they’re still considered part of the family, with Sherman and Miranda being their honorary third set of grandparents.
“Can Josie come too?” Ivy and Lainey ask at the same time.
“We’ll have to run home to change, but yes, we can all go when your grandma says he’s ready for visitors,” I answer. “Just for a few minutes, though, since he needs his rest.”
My little girl says to her friends, “Yay! Can you come over first? We can make cards for Grandpa so he gets better real fast.”
Autumn, who’d been carrying her own plate over to join us, stops in her tracks. Our eyes meet as the girls discuss what they want to draw, deciding they’d rather make a poster and glue all their pictures to it with their names so they can hang it in Sherman’s hospital room.
“When did Josephine start calling Sherman ‘Grandpa’?” I ask Autumn under my breath when she lowers herself onto the carpet beside me.
Eden, who has been sitting on the couch while finishing her breakfast, leans forward.
Dropping her voice, she says, “I overheard her and Brady talking. He said that since you two are probably getting married—his words, not mine—she has to call Sherman ‘Grandpa’ and Miranda ‘Grandma’, but told her that he doesn’t want her to call him ‘Uncle Brady’.
She’s been teasing him and calling him ‘Uncle Brady’ ever since, which the rest think is hilarious. ”
“Oh geez, this is bad,” Autumn says, and Eden gives her a sympathetic nod. “We’ll need to talk to her when we get home. I mean, you—you—need to talk to her when you get home.”
I’m helpless against the smile tugging up the corners of my lips. “You said ‘we’ first.”
Autumn stuffs half a pancake in her mouth, studiously looking away.
The separation feels wrong when Autumn and Brady bound away from my SUV and across the street when I pull into my driveway after breakfast. Josephine waves to her friends, who have just arrived at their home three doors down, and then races to shower and change before gathering her art supplies to lay them out on the kitchen table.
She carefully tapes some of her sketchbook papers together to make a giant poster, then impatiently waits by the front door.
Autumn and Brady arrive first, freshly showered.
It pleases me that Autumn didn’t bring my hoodie with her to return it.
With so many kids between them to get ready, Shayla and Eden arrive with their broods much later, bearing leftovers from yesterday for an early lunch.
After dozing on the couch, Autumn keeps flicking her gaze my way while the kids carefully draw “GET WELL SOON GRANDPA” in the center of the poster in big blocky letters with a rainbow of colorful markers.
They take quite a while to arrange all of their pictures so the collage is just right before gluing them down, then practice their cursive lettering when writing their names.
“Did you have that talk with her?” Autumn asks me when I sit on the coffee table, facing her. I wait so long to answer that she frowns.
“No,” I say slowly. “I didn’t.”
“Why not?” she asks with the wrinkle of her nose.
I nod to the side, take her hand, and pull her down the hallway, past the closed nursery door, where Benjamin and Sebastian are taking a longer-than-usual nap. They hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Inside my bedroom, I close and lock the door, then push Autumn’s back up against it.
I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “You know why, Angel.” I kiss her, tasting the mint on her tongue when she parts her lips for me.
But then she taps my chest and twists her head. “It’s going to hurt more the longer you let her go on calling him ‘Grandpa’. You need to stop her. Now.”
Pressing my finger to her chin, I turn her face back to mine and lean close. “No.”
“But he’s not—”
I don’t want her to say it, so I crush her lips with mine. When she opens her mouth wider, deepening the kiss, I lift the hem of her sundress—a vibrant yellow version this time—then tug her lacy thong down until it falls to her ankles.
“Forest,” she says with a gasp, her lashes fluttering as she pushes her fingers into my hair at the nape of my neck. “We can’t.”
“We can if we’re quick.” I rush to unbutton my jeans and pull my cock out, jacking it until I’m fully hard. I boost her up with my hands on the backs of her thighs, and when she hikes her knees up to my hips, I grind my erection against her pussy.
“Condom?” she squeaks, panting as she rolls her hips.
My voice is deep and husky when I line myself up, pressing my cockhead against her entrance. “I think we’re well past needing one, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Autumn locks her ankles around my back and yanks me forward with her heels, forcing me halfway inside her. “Oh god, baby,” she says, dropping her head back against the door with a thunk.
Immediately, I pull her away from the door, sealing my lips over hers to catch her moans, and set her on the edge of my dresser, thrusting shallowly until she’s wet enough to take all of me.
“Please, baby, faster,” she pants until I’m setting a brutal pace. Even then, it’s not enough. Half her focus is on keeping herself upright, her neck craned and shoulders against the wall. I need her entirely focused on us.
I scramble to pull her dress and bra off over her head, then swing her around when I close ourselves into my walk-in closet before laying her on the carpeted floor, my cock still inside her.
I’d take her to bed if we wouldn’t rock it so violently that the headboard would bang against the wall.
With the added insulation between us and everyone else, it’s less likely that anyone will hear us in here.
Autumn rushes to help me pull off my T-shirt in the dark, then shoves my jeans and boxers down lower. “Hurry,” she says, clawing at me, pulling me down flat on top of her.
Yes. Now I have all of her. She doesn’t have to think about anything other than how good I make her feel. Me and only me. I thrust into her hard, making her cry out into my mouth.
“Fuck, angel,” I hiss through gritted teeth, still keeping my voice down, my elbows braced over her shoulders, sweat already slicking my skin as I roll and punch my hips. “I can feel it. You’re going to squirt so hard on my dick any minute now.”
She doesn’t answer me with words, her teeth clamped over her fist to keep from screaming, but her pussy ripples around me, sucking me deeper.
Dropping my lips to her ear, I say, “I’m going to cum so deep inside you, you’re going to be leaking for days and begging me for more.”
Autumn jerks her hips up, arching her back, moaning around her fist when the first splash of her wet heat gushes out of her.
“Yeah, you like the sound of that, don’t you?”
She digs her nails into my back, her thighs tensing at my sides with another gush. “Baby, please.”
“That’s what I want to hear.” I nearly choke on my pleasure, her pussy like a vise around my thick shaft. “Say it again, angel.”
“Please, baby, please,” she cries, cutting off my air when she loops her arms around my neck.
Powerless to stop myself, with the first rope of cum she forces out of me, I beg, “Tell me not to pull out.”
“Don’t—oh god, don’t pull out. Please, please, don’t.”
“I won’t. Take it, Mama.” I gasp and finish emptying myself inside her, collapsing on top with my body and mind blissed out.
With enormous effort, Autumn pushes me off her with her own gasp for air, and I roll to the side.
“Sorry. Sorry,” I say, absently patting her stomach as my heart rate starts to slow.
I might be skinny, but my tall, lanky frame is still heavier compared to her short stature.
“You called me ‘Mama’,” Autumn says with something I can’t decipher in her voice.
I tense. “I did?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I clear my throat, my soft cock twitching with the first signs of swelling. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t?” she asks with obvious disbelief.
“It just kinda…slipped out.”
“Another kink of yours? Because I have to say, just because I call you ‘baby’ doesn’t mean I want you to call me ‘Mama’.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” I rush to reassure her. I definitely don’t see her as my mother in any capacity, kink or otherwise. “Just…you know, you could be pregnant.” That does it. I’m fully hard again and would love nothing more than to roll back on top of her.
“Oh geez. I forgot.”
“I didn’t.” It’s all I can think about—us as a family. How is it that she could forget? A distant knock sounds from my bedroom door, abruptly ending our conversation, and Autumn and I both snap upright. Easing the closet door open a crack, I ask loudly, “Yeah?”
Shayla raises her voice to be heard when she says, “Mom called. They’re allowing visitors now, and the kids are done with their poster. We’re ready to head out, so whatever y’all are doing…hurry up.”
“We’re not doing anything,” I say, my voice pitched high.
“Sure, I definitely believe that totally obvious lie,” she says with a laugh.
“We’ll, uh, be right there.” My legs jitter when I stand, and I flip on the closet light.
My stomach bottoms out when I look between Autumn’s still trembling thighs.
“Angel…you’re bleeding.” I don’t want to look down.
I don’t. I don’t. But I have to. And when I do, I see the tiny streak of red on my cock, and I stagger, lightheaded. “Did I hurt you?”
“I don’t think so,” she says, eyeing me. “I feel fine.”
“Then why…” No! No!
Autumn’s face pales when she peers between her legs.
It’s not much, what’s there, but if I didn’t hurt her, then that blood means she’s started her period.
Autumn’s teeth begin to chatter, and she hugs herself.
Pulling her knees up, pressing them together, she crosses her arms around her legs and shivers as if she’s cold.
“Can you, um, get my sister?” she asks, dropping her chin.
I yank a thick sweater off a hanger and help her into it. “Your sister?”
“Please,” she says, her eyes welling with tears. “Please, please, can you go get her?”
Confused why she would need her sister, but respecting her request, I rush to pull on my clothes. I’m not expecting Shayla to still be waiting outside my door, so I shriek the tiniest bit when I whip it open. “Autumn said—”
“Shayla!” Autumn yells, her voice breaking.
Shayla’s face transforms instantly, her smile flattening when she pushes past me and into the closet. When I follow, Autumn looks up over Shayla’s head. Her expression crumples, and she drops her face into her hands.
Kneeling in front of Autumn, Shayla turns and quietly tells me, “Give us a minute, will you?”
Though I don’t want to, with heavy feet, I exit the bedroom, press my back against the wall, and slowly slide down to sit on the floor.
Autumn started her period. She’s not pregnant.
And our “deal” to let me fulfill any of her “wild oats” experiences—which I only suggested because I was trying to buy time to figure out how to get the angel to want to be with me—is over before it really even got a chance to start. What am I going to do now?
I snap my head to the side when Josephine finds me in the hallway, and she grabs my hand, tugging me up. “Come look what we made! It’s awesome!”
Wiping away an errant tear, I plaster on a fake smile and follow her into the kitchen.