Chapter 25
KING & LILY - A DAY IN THE LIFE
Lily’s POV
It’s dark when I wake, which means it’s far too early for me to be awake. I know, though, that I won’t be able to go back to sleep. Not when my husband has his hands on my body and his mouth on my neck already.
“King, it’s early,” I half grumble, half don’t grumble because while I love my sleep, I love time with King more.
He presses his erection against my ass and continues kissing my neck before lifting his mouth and saying, “I got thirty fucking minutes with you last night, Lily. I’m taking my time with you this morning.” With that, his mouth finds my skin again while his hand reaches for my underwear.
He did only get half an hour with me last night.
That was because I spent most of the night on the phone with Birdie going over plans for Meredith’s birthday party.
Our daughter is turning sixteen tomorrow, and King and I are throwing her a party.
It was supposed to be just her friends coming, but now it seems everyone we’ve ever known has been invited.
My stress levels are beginning to reach new heights because I’m now not only planning a massive party, but I’m also handling my mother who is so out of touch with what a party for a sixteen-year-old looks like these days.
Birdie spent two hours on the phone with me last night calming me down after I had an argument with my mother over the games she thinks Meredith and her friends will want to play.
Games? Jesus. No. They’re sixteen for god’s sake.
I roll onto my back as King’s fingers find my clit. He continues kissing my neck, and between that and his fingers on my pussy, he’s managed to wake me right up. However, when my mind is as busy with other thoughts as it is now, even King has trouble getting all my attention in the way he wants it.
I curl a hand around his bicep. “I think I need you to run interference with my mother.”
He doesn’t respond to that, but rather, moves on top of me, kissing his way down my body.
“King,” I say, my tone growing insistent.
He lifts his head and meets my gaze. “I already run interference with your mother 24/7.” That’s all he says before he goes back to my body.
I grip his hair. “King.”
“Fuck,” he growls, looking up at me again. “Can we get into this after I fuck you?”
“No. I know you too well. You’ll take your time fucking me and then you’ll have to leave. And you’ll be too busy today for a conversation, and then tonight, it’ll be too late.” My eyes widen. “The party’s tomorrow. Tomorrow. I need your help today.”
King’s eyes search mine before finally, he releases a long breath and pushes up off the bed. Jerking his chin, he says, “Get your ass in the shower with me.”
I frown. “What? No.” I sit up. “I’m not having sex until we discuss this.”
“Trust me when I tell you that I know I’ll be fucking lucky if I get my dick anywhere near you this morning.” He gives me the look that says he both loves me and doesn’t know what to do with me at times. “We’ll talk in the shower.”
I watch him stride into the ensuite, wondering (and not for the first time) how his ass gets better with age while mine doesn’t. I also wonder (and definitely not for the first time) how I’ve survived nineteen years married to him.
“So,” I say as I step into the shower a minute later, “I just realised the next big party we’ll be throwing will be for our twentieth wedding anniversary.”
King’s eyes come to mine. “I’m taking you away for that. We’re not throwing a party for it.”
I move in front of him while he angles his head back under the shower and lets the water wash over his face and hair. Reaching for the soap, I say, “Where are you taking me? And why am I only just hearing about this now?”
He runs his hands down his face, clearing water from his eyes before looking at me again. “I just decided.”
I lather soap over the hard muscles of his chest and stomach. “Okay, I’m adding New Zealand to the list of possibilities.” I give him a pointed look. One that lets him know that list should only have one option on it.
King ignores my look and changes the conversation. “What’s the deal with the party?”
I continue soaping him. “With my mother you mean.”
“No, I mean with the party. What’s going on?”
“My mother is what’s going on. She’ll be the death of me. She’s—”
King wraps his hand around my wrist and stops what I’m doing. “Whatever this is, it’s got nothing to do with your mother, Lily. It never does when you’re this worked up. Your mother’s just the loudest problem, so you think you’re stressed over her.”
I stare at him with wide eyes. “I can assure you it has everything to do with her.”
“And I can assure you it fucking doesn’t,” he says gruffly. “What else is going on?”
I wriggle my wrist free of his grip. “Apart from the fact my mother is trying to take over, and when I say take over, I mean she’s trying to turn a sixteenth birthday party into a party for a ten-year-old, complete with Pin the Tail on the freaking Donkey, you’ve gone and invited the entire world to the party!
I’ve no idea just how many people are now coming.
I’ve no idea exactly how much food we need.
I’ve no idea of anything!” I exhale a breath.
“It’s too much, King. I think we need to cancel this party. ”
He watches me quietly for a moment before saying, “No. That’s not it. What else? And don’t even think about cancelling the party. Meredith has been looking forward to it for months.”
My eyes go wide again. “What do you mean ‘that’s not it’? What else do you think there is?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“There’s nothing else. I just need you to take over with my mother and make it clear to her that we’re not playing games at this party, that we’re not having party food a child would like, and that she’s not in charge. Can you do that for me?”
His eyes search mine for what feels like the longest time. Like he’s trying hard to get a good read on me in the way he often does. Finally, he says, “I’ll talk with her today.”
I place my hands to his chest and lean into him, relieved. “Thank you.” My husband is good at many things, one of them being handling my mother.
King’s hands slide around my body to rest on my ass and his lips find mine. He kisses me while backing me against the shower tiles. It’s the kind of kiss that lets me know he’s done with our conversation and that he intends on not allowing anything to come between him and what he wants to do to me.
There’s only one problem with that.
I’m not finished talking yet.
I kiss him back, but he clearly senses I’m not fully here for the kiss. Dragging his mouth from mine, he blows out another long breath and looks at me with all his signature frustration. “What else?”
“Travis.”
“Fuck.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “What’s he done now?”
Our fifteen-year-old son is as good at getting himself into trouble at school as our eighteen-year-old son was. Barely a week goes by without a call from Travis’s school reporting yet another incident that King and I have to deal with.
“He and Braxton were kind of involved in a fight at school yesterday.”
“Kind of?”
“You know what those two are like when one of their friends gets himself in a fight. They didn’t instigate it, but because they were involved, they’re being disciplined.
” Our son and Devil’s son are best mates and trouble follows them.
And since loyalty is so ingrained in them, there’s not one thing that will ever stop them from having a friend’s back.
“Has he been suspended?”
“No. He’s got lunchtime detentions for the next week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”
“You came home in a mood, and if I know one thing about parenting with you, it’s not to put you and either of your sons together when you’re both in a mood.
Travis spent yesterday afternoon working in the yard after I took his phone off him.
He knows to expect a conversation with you over this.
And King?” I pause for a moment, finding the right words.
“You need to tread carefully with this.”
“No, I need to make it fucking clear that this bullshit has to stop.”
I arch my brows. “Right, so that would have worked on you at fifteen?”
King’s features darken. “What I did at fifteen has nothing to do with this, Lily.”
“I agree, but at least try to think back to how you responded to authority figures at that age. And I think we also need to remember how we got Cade through this kind of stuff.”
“We barely fucking survived Cade.”
“Exactly, which makes me think we need a whole new strategy for Travis.”
King is the kind of man who always has a plan and a next move, but years of parenting have taught him that even when you have all your next moves lined up, there are times those moves are of no consequence.
Parenting has taught my husband things that nothing else in the world could ever have taught him.
I watch him now as his mind works through our current dilemma, and I can’t help but fall in love with him a little more.
If you’d told me when I gave my heart to him all those years ago that I’d still find reasons to fall even more in love with him almost two decades later, I wouldn’t have believed it possible.
It is possible to keep falling in love with your soulmate.
Even at times when we’re arguing, I find reasons to fall for King all over again and in new, inexplicable ways.