4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
The next time I opened my eyes, it felt like less than thirty seconds had passed.
Time to get moving, I thought, already mentally confirming my to-do list for the morning. Today’s Kiki’s big day. We’ve got to all be ready to support her—
I started to sit up and stopped.
Samantha was awake.
She’d disentangled herself from Marcie at some point and made her way across the bed.
God only knew how long she’d been lying there watching me—hopefully it was the alarm that woke her too and she’d only just shifted over to mine and Yukiko’s side of the mattress.
Even with Yukiko on my other side, she kept a small distance between us, like she was a little afraid to climb into my arms.
“Hey, babygirl.”
Her lips disappeared. For a second, I thought she was going to cry.
“Hey, Daddy.”
She crawled the last few inches and squeezed herself against me, the top of her head grazing my chin. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she let out a stifled sob, the barely noticeable swell of her pregnant belly pressing against my side.
“I’m sorry I stormed upstairs last night,” she whispered, swallowing hard. “I was mad at Jessamyn, and I took it out on everybody else. Including you.”
I was already shaking my head. “Babygirl, I figured you were just removing yourself from a bad situation. I’m not upset at you for doing that.”
Her hand found mine and squeezed it.
“You forgive me for not giving you a good-night kiss?”
To show her I did, I leaned down and smothered her mouth with my own. By the time we broke the kiss, the covers over our bodies felt almost intolerably hot. Samantha’s eyes were still watery, but the tears she might have cried didn’t come. Instead, she looked happy.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered. “And thank you for not letting me kill Jessamyn Fawkes.”
She didn’t say it like it was a joke. As much babygirl as there was in her first thank you, there was absolutely none of it in the second. She meant what she said—just like she’d meant what she’d tried to do with that baseball bat.
“You do not need to thank me for that, babygirl.”
Samantha shook her head. “Yes, I do,” she insisted.
“I lost my head, Daddy. I looked at Jessamyn and I just… snapped. If you hadn’t held me back, I’d be in jail right now.
Marcie wouldn’t have a sister wife, Kiki would be praying the Morning Harbor hosts hadn’t heard about my arrest yet, and the twins would have to grow up knowing Aunt Samantha as a mugshot, not a member of the family. ”
Jesus. I liked the sound of each of those things less than the last. It was a very good thing that we’d managed to avoid that outcome.
“You stopped all of that,” Samantha insisted. “You kept me from unloading on Jessamyn with my fists, so I ended up doing it with words instead. And yes, I owe you a thank-you for that. So thank you, Daddy.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. “You’re not mad at me?”
Samantha blinked. “For what?”
“Holding you back.”
She laughed against my shoulder—sleepy and soft enough to keep from waking her fellow wives. “Daddy. I’d only have been mad at you if you hadn’t.”
“How’s the nausea?”
Both Samantha and I turned. Yukiko was sighing and stretching across the mattress, awake and fully alert. One of the biggest days of her life, and the first thing she thinks about is the other wives, I thought.
What a woman.
Samantha stopped for a moment, no doubt having the same realization, then smiled. “Gone for the moment,” she said. “All that anger must’ve burned it out of me. I’m sure it’ll be back by lunch.”
“Good morning, princess,” I said.
“Today’s your big day,” Samantha added with a knowing smile. “You’re totally going to knock them dead, Kiki. Half that studio’s going to be madly in love with you before your interview’s over, and the other half are going to be too shy to admit it.”
“I sure hope so,” Kiki said ruefully. “I have not gotten enough sleep.”
“As soon as the interview is over, we’ll get you back home and into your pajamas,” I promised her. “I’ll spend the rest of the day waiting on you hand and foot.”
Yukiko grinned at that. “No you won’t. You’ve got way too much to do for me to let you.” Tiny wrinkles of mirth appeared in the corners of her eyes. “Maybe I’ll get the cheerleaders to do it for you.”
Wouldn’t that be a sight?
“Let’s get Marcie up and get cracking,” Samantha said. “We’ve got a lot to do.”
We most certainly did.
The next forty-five minutes elapsed in an absolute blur.
While I showered and shaved in one of the upper floor’s secondary bathrooms, Yukiko took over the master, with Samantha and Marcie pushing back their own morning routines to help her get ready.
Both girls were coming off of a breakdown and very little sleep, but they managed anyway.
In short order Yukiko was dressed in her best blazer and pencil skirt, her hair and makeup on point, her wedding ring sparkling on her right hand with tasteful, understated earrings to match.
The rest of the house was no less busy. While we worked upstairs to get ready, the rest of the crew were making preparations in their own way.
I had no way of knowing it, but Mona had made sure pretty much everyone showed up at the Avery residence to provide support, even if only of the moral kind.
Somewhere beneath my feet, Heather and Eva fried bacon like they were getting the campus basketball team ready for the big game, while Maria—back from dropping off Jessamyn’s car at whatever undisclosed location Mona had indicated—handled the coffee.
Mona oversaw everything, her attention half on the girls, half on her laptop, and half on the flurry of texts messages traveling between our operating center and the studio.
Yes, that was three halves. It didn’t matter.
Mona Isringhausen could handle three halves.
My mind was on the day ahead as I wrapped a towel around my waist, wiping the steam away from the bathroom mirror before running a razor (a pink one that belonged to Marcie, as this wasn’t my bathroom) down my cheeks.
I worried about Yukiko, in front of that big TV audience.
I worried about Victoria Ruocchio and whatever she was planning. I worried about Daniel.
I was worrying so damned hard I didn’t even hear the bathroom door creak open behind me.
“Hey there, tiger.”
I turned. Maria Alvarez had just closed the door behind herself and was now standing with her hands splayed across it and her shapely rear keeping it shut.
The humidity of the room meant that sweat was already beading on her breasts, which looked luscious in one of those low-cut athletic tops she always favored.
Her leggings were skintight, and the smile on her face was so wicked I instantly knew she’d snuck up here to do more than wish me good luck with Morning Harbor.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Maria said, glancing over her shoulder. “Mona’s expecting you and the wives downstairs in, like, ten freaking minutes. So there’s no time for foreplay.”
I blinked, the razor pausing at the side of my chin. “Right now?”
Maria winked.
“Listen, today is—”
“A big day,” she finished for me, sashaying across the bathroom.
She looked me up and down, the tip of her tongue running around her lips as her gaze focused on the bulge beneath my towel.
(Sue me, I appreciated the view). “Which is why your head wife asked me to come up here and make sure your head’s clear and your balls are empty before you take her to your appointment. ”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And at the same time, I absolutely could. This was very Kiki.
“She asked you…”
Maria was already slipping out of her leggings.
Underneath she wore a barely-there black thong—nothing else would’ve worked under fabric that tight without visible lines.
“Shh. Quit thinking, querido. You’ve got plenty of time to do that when you’re helping Mrs. Avery deal with those jackals. Right now…”
Maria sank to her knees in front of me.
“Right now, Papi, I just want you to enjoy this.”
She tugged off my towel before I could say a word, tossing it into a corner.
Underneath I was already most of the way hard—as soon as her fingers found my shaft, ‘most of the way’ became ‘all the way.’ I set the razor on the sink, leaning against the counter, my hand already going to the back of her head.
Maria smirked. “Figured you’d know exactly what to do…”
Her soft, pillowy lips kissed the underside of my shaft. Maria wasted no time—both of us knew we had minutes, at the most, before Mona would come knocking and demand I both feed and caffeinate. Both were things I needed.
But right now, Maria was here to service a deeper, more primal urge.
The Latina opened wide and swallowed me deep, her brown eyes locked on me the whole time she took me down.
The warmth of her mouth was hotter and wetter than the shower had been, and when she swirled that naughty tongue of hers around me as her lips moved back to my tip, I let out a groan that Yukiko probably heard all the way over in the master bathroom.
Which was, of course, exactly what my wife wanted.
Thank you, Kiki, I thought, my fingers tangling in Maria’s long brown locks. I needed this. Especially after last night.
Maria sucked and slurped me, bobbing up and down on my cock.
My hand pressed gently on the back of her head, gripping her locks, making her feel controlled in a way I knew made her wetter than just about anything else the two of us did.
For all of her Type-A realtor personality, Maria could be a shockingly submissive girl once all her pretensions were stripped away in the bedroom.
As if she were thinking the same thing, she pulled off me with a wet pop a few moments later. “Stop being so sweet to me, Papi,” she said, her voice half-teasing, half-challenge.
Hmm?