Chapter 18
Eighteen
ELLIS
The little imp is asking for it tonight.
She had to know I was coming. Josephine isn’t one to lose track of time, and apart from a few incidents when Zoe was particularly difficult at bedtime, I’ve been in her room at 8:00 every single night for over a month now. Generally, I’m inside her by 8:05.
Which means that tonight, when I arrive to find a trail of clothes leading to the dimly lit bathroom, and the sound of the shower running, I’m sure it’s not accidental. Prowling forward, my cock is already half hard as I pause in the doorway, enjoying the sight before me.
Josephine is standing beneath the spray of water, her head tilted back as she rinses shampoo from her hair. The bubbles flow freely down her body, forming rivers between her breasts and over her ass. I watch, reaching down to squeeze my erection through my pants.
The days have felt endless lately, and even juggling my dream job, spending time with Zoe and contemplating the mystery of Monsieur Perdue’s notes, isn’t enough to distract me from counting down the hours until she’s in my arms again.
The unspoken rule that the limited block of time was to be used for the sole purpose of getting the sexual frustration out of our systems, has been dismissed. While there are certainly more nights than not spent doing just that, there are also times when we watch movies or read side by side, sometimes cuddling and talking. It feels as though I’m in a relationship that exists only between the hours of eight and twelve, and every day, it’s getting harder to keep it that way.
Tonight, though, my only plans are to make the little tease scream.
She knows I’m here, and she’s putting on a show for me. I watch, rapt, as she trails her fingertips over her breasts, tummy and mound. Leaning back against the wall, she rocks her hips into her own touch as a quiet moan echoes off the tile. Patience nowhere to be found, I reach for the hem of my t-shirt.
I’ve had enough.
It only takes a few seconds for everything I’m wearing to hit the floor and Josephine’s lips curve into a pleased little smirk as I step under the water, watching her fingers circle her clit.
“What were you thinking about?” I brace my forearm on the wall above her head and reach down, my free hand covering hers, guiding the pace.
Josephine sighs, tilting her chin up, my cue to kiss her senseless. Instead, I lean forward, dragging my nose over the patch of skin I’ve developed a fondness for marking. Her body is covered in love bites, all the shape of my mouth and ranging from deep purple to pale yellow.
Between us, my hand slows hers to a sensual, slow pace. There’s a frustrated little noise from above my head, making me smile into her skin. “I was thinking about you,” she admits, and if I wasn’t so close to her, the words would have been lost in the spraying water.
Good, but not enough. “What was I doing to you?”
She moans. “Daddy, please ?—”
I get so hard when she calls me that. It taps into the same depraved, possessive side she so often awakens in me. I guide her hand lower. She thinks I’m making her fuck her own pussy, but my fingers join hers, stretching her more than she expected. Josephine’s sharp gasp of surprise goes right to my cock.
I lift my lips from her neck to swallow her cry as her inner walls clutch at the combined intrusion of my fingers and hers. “There you go,” I murmur against her lips, setting a slow, teasing rhythm. “Does that feel good, sweetheart? This is what you needed, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she whines, hitching her leg higher over my hip, trying to make room for more. “Ellis— oh god —Daddy, please fuck me.”
“Not yet.” I nip at her bottom lip and soothe the hurt with my tongue. “I want to know your fantasy.”
I’m positive that if we weren’t in this position, her face would have gone that adorable shade of pink it does when she’s shocked. Right now, she’s too worked up, too absorbed in what we’re doing to get self-conscious. “I was thinking.” Her voice breaks into a sob as I increase the pace of fingering her, eyes going wide. Judging by how her walls are fluttering and clutching over the intrusion, she’s already close. “I was thinking about sucking you off.”
“Yeah?” I grit out, and between her spread thighs comes the rapid slapping of wet flesh as I work her hand harder. This entire situation is impossibly erotic, and if she wraps her mouth around my cock, I’m going to blow in seconds.
Damn me, I have to make this last, and to that end…
Josephine cries out in protest when I pull back, but it morphs into a gasp when my hands wrap around the back of her thighs, lifting her and holding her open, pinned to the shower wall by my body.
“Put me in.” She does as I say, panting as she grips the base of my cock and guides my tip to fit against her slick, pink entrance.
I ease forward until I’m balls deep. “Such a tight pussy,” I growl the vulgar words, enjoying the way her cunt clutches at me as I say them. Pulling back, I drive forward again in a vicious, hard thrust that sends her up the wall and tears a broken sob from her lips.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” she reminds me, hands buried in my hair as I find a deep, grinding rhythm.
Damn, I’m not. We’ve been terrible about that lately, but I’ve thankfully had the presence of mind to pull out. “You’re making me lose my mind,” I mutter and lean forward to claim her lips with my own, kissing her until she comes, then letting her drop to her knees, fucking her mouth for all of thirty seconds before I explode down the back of her throat.
I’m distracted as we get out and dry off, unable to shake the feeling that something ominous is approaching.
It’s not a mystery why.
Nothing has changed, and yet, everything is different.
The pressure seems to be growing every day to make a decision, to commit to her or let her go, to find a way to keep my heart out of this mess while knowing it’s too late. She has me, and I don’t know how to get free, or if I even want to.
“You’re not as discreet as you think you are.”
I pause, a plate suspended beneath the flow of water from the sink. My mother takes it deftly from my hands, to wipe it with the dry cloth in her hands. She’s been here for two days now, and other than a few pointed remarks over whether I was going to help Josephine into her chair at dinner or whether I knew when her birthday was, the meddling old crone has kept her opinions to herself.
Thirty-six years of experience with my mother have taught me always to expect the unexpected, however, and I had a feeling her silence wouldn’t last.
Dinner has just finished and Jo and Zoe are in the back garden, picking berries from the patch of gnarled old raspberry bushes. I can just make them out through the kitchen window, and regretfully, I tear my eyes away to give my mother a tired, dismissive look. It won’t throw her off the scent, but I do have some pride. “You’re seeing things.”
Maude sighs, tossing her towel onto the counter and crossing to one of the kitchen chairs. “Is that what you’re going with, dear son? That I’m losing my marbles? I thought you were more clever than that.” She looks amused as she lowers herself into her seat. “Let’s drop the pretense, shall we? Your nanny already fessed up.”
I groan. If my mother had arrived with some notice, I’d have been able to prepare Josephine, but instead she was thrown to the meddling, nosy wolf with no warning at all. “What did you say to her, maman ?”
“Nothing you shouldn’t have said to her yourself.”
Irritated, but not surprised, I shake my head. “Good god. Is it any wonder I’m already gray?”
This statement is met with an impatient tutting . “It certainly hasn’t hindered you in finding a twenty-two-year-old girlfriend. I’d give you far more grief for that if I didn’t like her so much.”
Despite myself, I lean against the counter to look at her directly. “You like her?”
“I just said that, didn’t I?” Maude waves off my answering noise of impatience with a laugh. “Oh, don’t get your underpants in a twist. Of course I like her. She’s lovely. Far too good for you, of course, but if she’s willing to settle, I’ll accept the wonderful daughter-in-law without complaint.”
My gaze falls to the floor as her words fill me with something hot and bitter. “She won’t be your daughter-in-law.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
Looking satisfied she’s gotten a rise out of me, my mother leans back in her chair, fixing me with a severe, unimpressed look. It’s the same one I got when I was ten years old and she caught me skipping school to read under a tree, or when I was considering turning down my scholarship to Weston to stay close to her. “May I give you a piece of advice, Ellis?” She purses her lips.
“You will whether I want it or not, so I don’t see why my response to that matters.”
She continues on as if I haven’t spoken at all. “Don’t push the right woman away because you once chose the wrong one. You’re giving Miranda far more power than she deserves.”
Ice slides down my spine. “It has nothing to do with me. Or Miranda for that matter,” I bite back, furious. “My feelings aren’t the only thing to consider here. There are other factors. Seeing her publicly could cost me my job, and I can’t put Zoe in the position to be abandoned again. Like it or not, I need to protect her.”
“Protect her, or protect yourself?” I hiss in protest, and she scoffs. “Oh stop, Ellis. You’ve always been the same. So stubbornly noble. Sometimes, keeping one’s word does more harm than good, my dear. Your dear ex-wife proved that.”
“I don’t want to discuss this with you anymore. It’s absolutely none of your business.”
Maude looks as though she’s prepared to ignore this too, but turns her attention to be the back door as it opens, Jo and Zoe reentering the kitchen .
“Look, Papa!” Zoe gloats, thrusting a heaping basket of berries into my hands.
“We’ll have to freeze them or something,” Josephine muses aloud, crossing to wash her hands in the sink beside me. “There’s no way we can eat them all before they go bad. Maude, you’ll have to take some home with you, too.”
My mother pulls Zoe into her lap, kissing her cheek fondly. “Oh, I’ll never say no to that. I know how to appreciate a gift when I see one.” She gives me a challenging look.
I ignore her, turning my attention to my daughter. “Come on, Zo. Bath time.”
“I can do the bedtime routine if you want,” Jo offers as she turns off the sink, taking the towel I offer her with a gentle smile of thanks. It’s only for a fraction of a second, but my heart still flips when my eyes meet hers. God, she’s so beautiful. Every time I think I’ve gotten used to it, the realization will sneak up and hit me over the head all over again.
“ I’ll do it,” Maude informs us. “Both of you have earned a break. Why don’t you walk into the village? Or even drive into the next town for a drink? I’d be happy to?—”
“ No .”
The word came out too harsh, too fast, and too loud. For Zoe, who has only heard me raise my voice a handful of times in her entire life, it’s alarming. In an instant, she’s burst into tears, and throat thick with regret, I move forward to lift her into my arms.
“I’m sorry mon coeur ,” I tell her, sick with guilt. She clings to me, sniffling, and I rub her back. “I’m very sorry.” Turning toward my mother and Josephine, my second round of apologies gets caught in my throat.
Josephine has turned back toward the door, and though I can’t see her face, I can tell by the way her shoulders have bunched forward that she’s upset. “I’m going for a quick walk!” she says in a rush over her shoulder, her voice falsely cheery and bright. Seconds later, the door shuts behind her with a snap.
Maude glowers at me. “ Tu êtes un imbécile. ”? *
Yes, I know very well what an idiot I am, but Zoe is still whimpering, and there’s nothing I can do for Josephine. Not at this moment.
Turning my back on my mother without another word, I head toward the stairs, murmuring quiet, apologetic words to my daughter, even as I spiral further into guilt and misery. I feel like a bastard. Maude’s questioning had me on the defensive, struggling to make sense of the tangled web of responsibilities, fears and feelings for the one woman in the world I shouldn’t.
If I’m honest with myself, this has been building for weeks. This is a relationship, whether we label it as one or not, and it’s happening, regardless of if I’m ready for it. For months now, I’ve been keeping this woman at arm’s length, neither pushing her away, nor pulling her close, lashing out like a wounded animal when my mother tried to give me a push.
It was always going to come to a head, and now I’ve pushed us over the edge with a single word.
No.
One final attempt to pretend this woman doesn’t mean everything to me, and I might have pushed her away for good.
If I had even a sliver of self-control left to my name, I would let it be. We’d grow apart. I wouldn’t go to her room anymore, and she wouldn’t fill my days with those tiny, precious moments of connection. My job would be safe, I wouldn’t risk my daughter being abandoned a second time, and everything would go back to how it was before.
It won’t work, though. If the last months have taught me anything, it’s that I can’t run from this, and now, I’m done trying.
Thankfully, Zoe seems to have recovered from my momentary loss of temper, and cheerfully recounts how she helped Jojo cut fabric for her new princess dress as I get her bathed and ready for bed. I listen patiently, my battered heart swelling with pride at how well she’s speaking now. The past year has brought a lot of progress, but it isn’t in question that only a few months of consistent exercise, fresh food and one-on-one attention from Jo has done wonders for my girl.
When Zoe has finally settled down, I leave her room, heading straight for the balcony door.
* ? You’re an imbecile.