Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHARLIE
The next morning. I fluttered my eyes open. Athena laid her head on my shoulder, her body curled into mine. I breathed in her strawberry shampoo and listened to her soft and slow breathing against my chest.
Gently, I rubbed my fingers against her hip. She stirred against the crook of my arm, then opened her eyes. The sun flooded into the room and hit her blue irises, making them a sea of color.
“Good morning,” she murmured, squinting.
“Morning.”
She looked down at my lips. “Was last night real?”
I chuckled. “Yes.”
“Do you take any of it back?” she asked. “It’s okay if you—”
Before she could finish that sentence, I pressed my lips to hers. “No.”
A soft smile stretched across her lips, one that made me all giddy on the inside. She giggled and tucked some hair behind her ear. Then she pressed her lips to mine again. “I don’t take it back either.”
After shuffling back so I leaned against the headboard, I massaged her shoulder in circles. “Why did you suddenly get so insecure about the way you walked?” I asked, unsure if I should bring this up now.
Chances were that if she had brought it up then, she was still thinking about it, still thinking that I would choose someone else over her because some asshole had said something to her about the way she moved.
Athie pulled the blankets up to her chin and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Derek said something to you, didn’t he?” I asked, trying to stay calm.
She tensed and gulped. “Yes, but I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
“I love how you see the good in people,” I said. “But some people aren’t good.”
Her bottom lip quivered, but I grasped her face before she had a chance to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“There’s no reason to apologize. Just don’t listen to a word that comes out of his mouth.”
“I know, but … I had been feeling really insecure over Nadia and all the other girls that you’d been with,” she said, dropping her gaze. “I look nothing like them, and he caught me at a bad time.”
I didn’t want to tell her this—because I honestly didn’t want to get into the whole porn thing—but there was a reason that I didn’t do it with any girls who looked like Athena. Athena was special to me, and I wasn’t going to try to replace her with another woman.
“You don’t have to worry about Nadia or any of the other girls. Because there are none.”
“But you still have to—”
“No, I don’t have to do anything,” I said. “No more porn, unless you’re the girl with me.”
She swallowed, her eyes growing wide. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Another chuckle left my mouth. “Yes, Athie. Now, I’ll make us breakfast,” I murmured against her lips. “Don’t move.”
It was half selfless, half selfish to keep her in my bed. I wanted her to feel special after she’d confessed that she loved me last night, but I also so desperately wanted to get rid of those pills in the kitchen cabinet. Now.
Instead of heading right for the pantry closet to grab the pancake mix, I glanced behind my shoulder to make sure Athena hadn’t followed me and headed straight for the cabinet where she kept her birth control pills.
Once I found them hidden in the back, I grabbed them and walked to the trash. I glanced down at them to see that today’s pill was still in the packet. But so was yesterday’s and the pill from the day before.
Every single one of them since we had started this little relationship.
My dick hardened inside my pajama pants. Fuck!
Athena had always—always—taken her pill. Almost religiously. She had multiple alarms set every morning to make sure she took it, but it wasn’t like she was having sex anyway.
Now she actually was, and she wasn’t taking them.
Fuck. Fuck! Athena wants this as much as I do.
I pushed each of the pills out of the packet, the silver lining breaking and the pills falling right into the trash, never to be found.
I did it so every single one of them wasn’t in the packet any longer, and then I dumped the remainder of yesterday’s coffee grinds from the coffee maker over the top of them.
She had known my goal from the beginning. I had made a promise to her.
And after Derek had decided to take advantage of her, I wasn’t taking any chances. Athena was mine, and I wasn’t going to let her go. She was stuck with me forever. I’d make sure of it.
I shut the trash can and grabbed the pancake mix from the pantry, dumping some into our mixing bowl and pretending like nothing had happened. It wasn’t like she needed them anyway.
Just the thought of seeing Athena’s belly round with my baby …
Damn, it does something sinister to me. Makes me want to tie her up and breed her until she’s pregnant.
After adding some vanilla, milk, and eggs, I stirred the contents of the bowl, trying to calm myself down so I wouldn’t barge back into my bedroom and take Athie again. I didn’t want her to think that I was using her after she admitted all her feelings to me last night.
“It smells yummy in here,” Athie said, walking out in my oversize shirt.
Fuck, she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. Maybe she always has.
I set the spoon down in the bowl and cocked my finger. “Come here.”
Once she reached me, I seized her waist, set her on the counter, and stepped between her legs. She giggled, her red hair falling into her face, and tugged me closer to her, pressing her lips against mine.
I drew my hands up her thighs and gripped her ass underneath my oversize shirt. When she curled her legs around the backs of my knees and pulled me closer, I sucked her bottom lip between my teeth.
“God, you’re so sexy.”
My dick hardened even more, and I pulled it out, setting it right against her entrance. Athena sucked in a breath, her nipples becoming taut against my shirt. I pulled her closer and pushed myself into her tight cunt.
I would keep my promise to her. She’d be pregnant before my parents’ party.