Chapter Fifteen Milo
Fifteen
Milo
The dreadful feeling is back. Actually, feelings, plural. I fear that they’re multiplying.
I’m sitting across a half-decimated dining table from Prue as she holds my newborn niece, Harper, in the crook of her arm and listens to Sef share her harrowing birth story.
The oldest kids are having a movie night downstairs while Nik bathes the youngest two upstairs.
Nadia sits to my left, picking slowly at the second helping Nik insisted she should eat.
I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought she’d been looking a little too thin.
And, throughout all the noise and chaos and chatter, my eyes are glued to Prue and that tiny baby in her arms.
And I know something is deeply, deeply wrong with me because I keep wanting to interrupt their conversation and ask Prue if she wants a baby of her own someday. Or someday soon . Like, I don’t know, ten or so months from now.
I’m sick in the fucking head. Prue is a liquid curse, rotting my brain to an unrecognizable state, and I keep coming back to drink as if I have a death wish.
“Milo?” Sef says my name in a tone that would suggest it’s not the first time she’s said it. I peel my gaze away from the curl resting against Prue’s collarbone and find Sef’s expression, drenched in sardonic glee. “Hey, champ,” she says with a laugh. “Welcome back.”
“What?” I blink back to focus, finding myself mirroring Sef’s grin. “Sorry, I was distracted.”
“I was just saying that I have to go get Harp down for the night, but I’m sure you’d be willing to give Prue the tour of your room, yeah?”
“ Jesus, ” Nadia mumbles into her cup of water.
I nod, catching up. “Oh, uh, sure, yeah.” Because I stand so abruptly, my chair nearly falls backward before Nadia reaches out and catches it. I pick up my dishes, nearly dropping them all when Prue giggles.
“Smooth,” Nadia whispers for my ears only.
“Uh, shall we?” I say, finally allowing my attention to turn back to Prue.
With a proud smile, she picks up her plate and begins following me toward the kitchen. The second we’re out of the dining room, Prue nudges me.
“What is up with you?” she asks, wearing a grin so large it crinkles the corners of her eyes.
She’s being cruel, as she has been for the past few hours.
Because when she said she needed a few minutes to change before we left for dinner, she didn’t warn me the way a friend ought to about what she’d intended to wear.
Normally modest, casual Prue is dressed like the sexiest librarian from any porno or teen flick you’d ever possibly imagine.
Her short, short pleated skirt is an autumnal tartan pattern with brown tights underneath. On top, a sleeveless sweater vest exposes more of her chest than I’ve previously been witness to—solidifying V as my favorite letter of the alphabet.
I haven’t been able to catch my fucking breath. I cannot stop imagining flipping up that little tease of a skirt and falling to my knees in front of her.
“You know exactly what you’re doing,” I tell her, taking her dishes and loading them into the dishwasher with mine. “Wearing that.”
She smirks wickedly, her eyes glancing up to the amber pendant lights hanging above the kitchen island. “At some point you’ll have to actually compliment me instead of continuing to insinuate my outfit was chosen to cause you harm.”
I suppose it’s not the first time I’ve acted wounded by the sight of her this evening, and it will not be the last. I check over my shoulder to make sure no one is near, and then I slide my hand across her belly, pulling her to my front.
“I’m going to need a fucking blindfold to focus on this conversation we’re supposed to have tonight.
” I speak into her shoulder, then bury my mouth against the soft skin of her neck.
She gasps softly, leaning her head to the side as my lips explore her neck.
“And I”—she elbows me when I rut against her—“am going to need a spray bottle.” She steps away, reaching toward the dishes in the sink.
I laugh. The sound turns ragged when I notice a small tear in the seam of the tights along her upper thigh, begging to be ripped open. “You are…” I say, biting my fist as she bends to place a bowl in the bottom rack of the dishwasher, and I see the faintest hint of the curves of her ass.
“What?” She grabs the last two items from the sink and places them inside the dishwasher.
I adjust myself inside of my shorts before she stands back up. “Here’s an idea,” I say brightly. “You can borrow some of my clothes.”
She turns over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes at me while still wearing that perfect little smirk. “Your clothes won’t fit me.”
“Exactly.”
“As the more”—her eyes roll downward between us, then back to my face—“ experienced one of the two of us, you sure are acting like a virgin this evening.”
I chuckle slyly. “Experienced, huh? That might be the nicest way anyone’s ever called me a slut,” I say, shutting the dishwasher and leaning my hip onto the counter.
Prue matches me, leaning against the counter on the other side of the dishwasher. I steal a glance at her tits, the perfect handfuls they are, and the cleavage between them where I want to bury my tongue and teeth.
“Well, if the mustache fits…” she teases.
I slide my finger and thumb over the ’stache, waggling my brows as she giggles softly. “Oh, yeah? This does it for you, Killer?”
“Oh, yeah… ” she says sarcastically, checking behind me before looping her arms around my shoulders. “I would watch Magnum, P.I. reruns whenever I was home sick from school. Selleck basically invented sex for me.”
“Good to know,” I say, leaning down to kiss her.
The moment our lips connect, the plan to be gentlemanly is abandoned.
Delicacy and decency go out the window when she swipes her tongue across my upper lip, and then pulls me in deeper for more.
She takes my tongue into her mouth with a breathy gasp and a tug on the back of my head.
I groan, taking hold of her neck as I lick the inside of her mouth.
I’m about ten seconds away from taking her to my room and asking to bury my face between her legs when a well-timed cough sounds from behind my back.
“Don’t mind me,” Nik says, waltzing into the kitchen.
“Just needed this,” he says, picking up a baby bottle and shaking it at us both.
Prue steps back, covering her face in her hands before studying the cupboard’s wood grain intently.
“Milo, as a reminder, there are three children outside of your bedroom door right now watching a movie. And they certainly do not need a sex-ed lesson from their least-favorite uncle.”
“I’m their only uncle!” I shout after him as he exits the kitchen, instinctively stepping closer to Prue, who buries her face into my biceps, concealing her laugh.
“And those kids do need sex-ed lessons,” I mumble.
“Nik never got one, clearly, that’s why there’s so many of them.
” She laughs harder, shaking against me.
“I’m glad you find this so funny,” I tease her, pressing a kiss against the top of her head.
“I’ve never been busted before!” she whispers. “I feel like a teenager!”
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, tipping her head back with my fingers in her hair. “We need to talk.”
“But what about my tour of your room?” She pouts disingenuously. I know what she wants. She wants to see the drawings, which I haven’t had time to hide yet, laid out on my bed.
“Over my dead body.”
“Milo…” She pouts again, twisting in my hold. “C’mon, give me the tour.”
“You’ve seen the kitchen,” I say, gesturing around, before leaning in close. “Which, most would agree, is the heart of the home. So, I think that’s enough for today.”
“What if I take one quick peek in your room and then—”
I shut her up with a kiss, swift and sweet. “No, nosy.”
Her lips curl into a smile as she blinks up at me. “Fine,” she says. “Then you don’t get to read any of the poems I’ve written about you.”
My eyebrows rise on a disbelieving laugh. “You’re bluffing. This is a negotiation tactic.”
“No, that’s what this was,” she says, lifting her skirt on either side of her hips as she walks away from me toward the front door.
“So, you admit it!” I shout after her, adjusting my shorts once again before I follow Prue down the hall.
Prue slips on her jacket as I put on my shoes, yelling her thank-yous and goodbyes in the direction of my siblings before we step out onto their porch, and I’m instantly reminded how quiet it is outside of Nik’s four walls.
We walk to Prue’s car in moonlit silence, accompanied by the crickets, the breeze through the long grass, and an owl who seems to have found a home nearby.
“This is yours, right?” she says, lifting the hand I’ve already wrapped in mine to point toward Bertha.
“Yes, isn’t she magnificent?”
“ She, huh?”
“Bertha,” I answer. “Want me to make introductions?”
“Why do I feel like this is more important to you than meeting your family?”
“Because you’ve got good instincts,” I say, leaning onto Bertha’s bumper. “Bertha, honey, this is Prue.”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Does she usually talk back?”
“Only if she likes you.”
“Hi, Bertha,” she says, tapping a bumper sticker that reads My Child Is Failing Elementary School . “I like your accoutrements, ” she says alongside a giggle.
“Yeah?” I say, moving to circle behind her. I move the hair off her shoulder and slot myself into the space it’d occupied. “Which is your favorite?”
She hums thoughtfully, admiring the view of my beloved van’s bumper.
“Hmm…I think that one,” she says, pointing.
“ Chicken Pot Pie: My favorite three things, ” she reads.
“Or…gosh there are so many good ones.” I press my smile into her shoulder.
She giggles again, rocking in my hold. “But I like that one too,” she says, reaching out to touch the very first sticker I ever got.
Drive Safe, Somebody Loves You.