Chapter 29 Sullivan
SULLIVAN
“Tate, Baby?” I press a kiss to her bare shoulder as I climb onto the bed, fully suited after my shower.
She stirs, nuzzling her head into the pillow. I lean on one elbow, admiring how damn good she looks in my bed. We only fell asleep a couple of hours ago. We spent the night wrapped up in each other, kissing, touching, tasting… coming.
I couldn’t quell the raw need to be inside her. It controlled me, making sleep impossible until I’d felt her body bend and quiver to my touch, again and again.
We fucked until we lost count. Her sweet cries are still echoing in my ears.
Sliding the cover lower, I kiss a trail down her spine, pausing to run a hand over the beautiful curve of her ass. I give it a squeeze and my dick flexes in my pants against her thigh.
“You’re a fiend.” She peels her eyes open. “Does your designer dick not need a rest?”
“Designer dick?”
She gives me a sexy smile. “Yeah. It felt pretty good quality last night.”
I sink my teeth into her ass cheek, playfully nipping it. She giggles and the sound makes my fucking chest tight with emotion. I haven’t woken up with a woman in my own bed since Claudia. But that never felt like this.
I like how good this feels.
I like how Tate makes me feel.
“What time is it?” she murmurs sleepily, eyeing up my suit.
“Almost five thirty.”
“Molly?” Her eyes widen and the fact she’s concerned makes me slide up the bed and pull her mouth to mine for a slow kiss.
“She could get up any minute. That’s why I woke you.
I’m going to keep an eye out for her. You stay here.
Take as long as you need and text me when you’re ready.
I’ll take her to check the mail downstairs, and when we come back we can tell her you let yourself in so you could have breakfast with us. ”
“Okay.” Tate bites her lower lip, her eyes sparkling. “Are you sure you want me to be here for breakfast, though? I’ll understand if you’d rather I leave so she doesn’t find anything odd.”
I hold her chin and lift her mouth to mine again, giving her another slow, deep kiss.
“Text me when you’re ready,” I repeat, not dignifying her absurd question with an answer.
I give her one last look, drinking in her smooth feminine curves before I leave the room, closing the door behind me.
“How’s your father’s case progressing?” I ask Tate two days later, while she sits beside Molly, eating bagels she somehow managed to bake in the shape of curled-up dachshunds.
She’s spent the last two nights at our house. I can’t call it sleeping over because we hardly sleep. But despite clocking the least hours I have since Molly was a baby and woke for night feeds, I’ve got enough energy to run a marathon.
I reach over, taking Tate’s glass and re-filling it with orange juice. Our fingers touch and she blushes. I narrow my eyes at her in amusement. How can she blush when only a few hours ago she was watching me fuck her from behind in the mirror, so hard that her tits were bouncing?
“Really good.” She smiles. “They made him a settlement offer, and he was going to accept, but his lawyer said he could get him more. Dad can’t believe it.”
“Hmm, good.” I nod, pleased that my suggestions to the engineering company her father worked for were taken onboard. Knowing the right people in this city can get you anything you want. Or at least, knowing things they don’t want you to know. Like engineering firm CFO’s committing tax fraud.
Tate doesn’t need to know that small detail. As long as her father is happy with the outcome, then my hand in it is a mere insignificant detail.
“It’s a relief that it didn’t take longer. I’d have been working triple shifts if we’d had to pay the lawyer more.”
She lifts her bagel and takes a bite, her gaze warming as she watches Molly stroke her own dog shaped one.
“A teacher’s salary will be more though, once you get a position,” I say, packing Molly some snacks into her bag, ready for a day with my father and Halliday.
“What do you mean?”
“Arabella said you’re interviewing, and the barista role is just temporary.”
I screw the lid on Molly’s snack pot, smirking at the cartoon fruit sticker on it that Sinclair gave her. “I’m searching for berried treasure.”
“Oh. No, that’s Whitney. She does the afternoon shifts now.”
“Whitney?” My grip on the pot tightens and I shove it into Molly’s bag with unnecessary force as warning tingles prick up over my skin.
“Yeah. She’s a kindergarten teacher. Blonde? Tall?”
Tate looks at me like I should know who she’s talking about, and I vaguely recall another blonde who works there. But Arabella told me her friend’s cousin is beautiful. She could have only been talking about Tate. There’s no one else who’s even remotely as attractive…
“Whitney’s a teacher?”
“Yeah. She’s lovely. The kids adore her.”
I place my hands flat on the counter and suck in a deep breath, forcing myself to count to ten.
“You okay?” Tate asks, studying me. She places her bagel down as realization dawns over her. “You told me I was great at my job. You knew I was a barista, right?”
I roll my lips, choosing my words carefully. “I meant how great you are with Molly. I thought—”
“You thought I was Whitney?” She glances at Molly who’s busy talking to her bagel rather than eating it. “I understand if you don’t want me to watch her anymore. I’m not qualified. I’m not—”
“I don’t care about some piece of paper,” I bark a little too harshly. Then I look at Molly. “Sweetheart? Can you go and get Baby from your room, ready to take to Grandad’s, please?”
“Okay,” she replies happily.
I plant a kiss to the top of her head as I help her down from her seat.
As she leaves the room, I sit beside Tate and lower my voice, the words coming so easily I surprise myself. My father will be proud.
“I care about the smile on my daughter’s face when she sees you.
I care about the way she sleeps better after spending time with you.
I care about the way she comes to you if she’s worried or hurts herself.
” I reach for her hand and entwine our fingers.
“I care about the way you can give her something I can’t. ”
I inhale deeply at Tate’s puzzled expression.
“She has Sinclair and Halliday. And she loves them. I watch her blossom from their attention… just like she does with you. Only with you, it’s more. Because you aren’t family. Molly’s chosen you all by herself.”
Tate’s eyes shine as she looks between me and Molly, who’s walking back into the room, hugging her baby doll, preventing me from saying something else that I can’t take back. Something about the way I feel. About what I care about.
Because this isn’t about me.
Emotion makes my throat thicken as I step back into reality from wherever I just went that made me confess those things.
They’re true. Every word.
But their weighted meaning hanging in the air and making Tate look at me like she’s seeing something for the first time makes my chest tighten and my heartbeat crash loudly in my ears like storm waves over rocks.
It’s always been Molly and me.
And that day I saw her left in a box, I promised myself it always would be. I read that note Natasha left, and I knew beyond doubt that everything I did from that moment on wouldn’t be about me.
It would always be about Molly.
She comes first. Not me.