Chapter Eleven Bram
Chapter Eleven
Bram
Maddie’s face crumples so quickly that I barely track what happens—a dimple in her chin, a quiver of her lip, and then tears, streaming down her cheeks and racing down her neck to join the post-shower droplets still freckling her chest above the towel.
“Madelyn, are the twins okay?” I ask desperately, and when she nods, the wave of panic recedes.
“Playdate,” she chokes out.
Fuck. Right. Having Maddie here for the last month meant that I was no longer on playdate management duty, and I’d forgotten.
I let out a breath—slowly, so Maddie won’t notice. I didn’t actually think the twins were in any danger, but the mammal-parent part of my brain immediately relaxes knowing where they are.
And then she starts crying even harder.
I might be a rare person in that tears rarely upset me.
Crying is good for us, at least sometimes: it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, it calls forward endorphins and oxytocin, it signals a need for attachment and inter-individual response and can often succeed in strengthening social bonds.
To that end, I’ve never tried to stop my children from crying—after I changed a diaper or bandaged a scraped knee or took away screen time, I always held or cuddled the little crier until the tears turned into sniffles and then into sighs, and never told them not to cry or to forget about it.
What would be the point of that? Telling someone to stop crying is essentially telling them not to feel what they’re feeling, and you might as well command the moon to wane or tell a prairie thunderstorm to settle down.
Feelings are weather, and weather is . .
. itself. The best thing you can do is take shelter together.
Except—
Except right now, I am not not upset. I am not serene and unruffled in the face of emotional weather. I see Maddie’s shock dissolve into shame and hurt—and despair—
And I’m across the room somehow; she’s in my arms somehow.
I’ve pulled her tight into my chest, her head nestled well under my chin, her wet chest and arms and hair getting everything damp, and I want to fix it, I want to fix whatever it is, I want to tell her that I will make it better, and then I want to go and make it better.
Even if she’s crying because of me. Because I was too stern or too stingy with my shower or because I scared her by walking in.
As that last possibility occurs to me, I loosen my hold and attempt to step back.
Apart from her using my shower—which is objectively a little strange—she still has a right to privacy, and I have her crushed against my chest while she’s still wet and basically naked.
But when I try to pull away, she tightens her arms around my waist and buries her face in my chest, crying even harder.
Full-blown sobs. Sobs like I would never have thought a sharp, perfectly made-up law school grad capable of.
And I don’t . . . hate this moment right now.
I hate that she’s upset, of course, I hate that I don’t know what’s happening and so I can’t start helping.
But I don’t hate the feeling of her face pressed against my chest, of her fingers clutching at my shirt like I’m the only thing keeping her upright.
Of her lingering jasmine scent mingled with the smell of my bodywash, my shampoo.
In fact, smelling me on her makes me want to growl in pleasure. Makes me want to pet her, spoil her.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay. Come here, yes, just like that. Good girl.”
I’ve walked us over to the large wingback I have in front of the fireplace and I sit down, pulling her onto my lap.
She goes willingly, pliantly, nestling right up against my chest again and continuing to cry through it all.
If there was ever a time that I resented my high school growth spurt, having to duck through doorways, having to get blazers and jackets tailored for my shoulders, then I was a fool, because this moment, being able to hold Maddie—through whatever this is—is more than worth it. It’s everything that could ever matter.
I stroke her wet hair. She’s got her fingers twisted in my shirt, her knees pulled up as far as they’ll go, and when I adjust the towel to keep her covered, she balls up all the tighter, like she wants to crawl inside my rib cage and hide there.
“It’s okay,” I soothe in a low voice. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go.”
The weather has been fussy—cool at night, a little too warm during the day—and so I still have the air-conditioning going to keep the edge off the heat.
Which means that soon Maddie starts shivering as she cries, chilled from being wet and in a now-damp towel.
I reach for a blanket folded neatly beside the chair and pull it up over her, towel and all, smoothing it over her back and tucking it around her thighs.
And gradually, as she warms up, as I hold her securely against me and rub her back over the blanket, her ragged breathing starts to mend itself. Her tears slow. She doesn’t stop gripping my shirt, however. She doesn’t unbury her face.
It’s not a good thing to do, it’s not at all the right thing to do, but the itch to feel her skin under my palms is overwhelming, a craving that roars at full hunger nearly the instant I first recognize it: I slip my hand under the blanket to stroke her bare thigh.
From her knee to where the towel ends at the curve of her backside, and then back down again.
I can’t see them, but I can feel the goose bumps rippling out from my fingertips, an opulence of them, everywhere I touch. And she’s trembling again but not like she’s cold.
She sucks in a breath as my fingertips trail higher, up to her hip, and then leave, like nothing happened, like I’m still on official childcare-provider-comforting business.
But then I caress up to her hip again, treating myself to a scant second of pause, a flash of memory involving my hands and these same hips, and she lets out a shuddering exhale.
And then . . . shifts.
Instead of tucking herself into my chest now, she’s sitting squarely on my lap, her head resting on my shoulder and her legs hanging over the arm of the chair.
The hard-on that I hadn’t realized was swelling is now roosted right under her warm, plush rear, trapped between us, and the pressure is .
. . is almost enough, I think. I could come like this, with her sitting on me and nothing else.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t tilt her head back to find my gaze. But her knees part. A little, and then enough that a hand could reach the warmth between her thighs.
“Madelyn,” I say, and my voice is low and firm. “Are you spreading your legs?”
A short breath. And then a quick nod, her still-damp hair brushing against my jaw.
“Are you spreading your legs for me?”
Another nod, fast, urgent.
“Is it your pussy? Is it needy? Have you been neglecting it?”
Her head falls back a little as she whimpers out a yes, Bram.
“That’s such a bad girl,” I breathe as my hand moves between her legs. “If I can’t trust you to take care of it”—my fingers reach silky curls—“then I’ll have to do it myself.”
The moment I part her cunt, she is all slippery lushness, like ripe fruit. I groan at the slick arousal, I groan again as I penetrate her with a finger and feel how hot she is inside. Blistering and tight and fuck, so perfect, fuck, fuck—
She’s squirming now, her thighs as wide as she can get them, and both the blanket and the towel have slid down, showing me her tits, her bunched-up nipples, the flush creeping up her chest.
“Maddie,” I say, “I am going to give you an orgasm now. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Bram” is her whined-out answer, and she’s wriggling so much in my lap that I give her cunt a light slap. She whines again, her head falling back, her throat working.
“Hold still.” It’s half instruction, half threat, and it’s only when she promises with a delirious sort of nod that I find her clit and begin.
I work the small bud carefully, with all of my attention. Like a doctor treating a patient, like a gardener tending to a rare plant. That night above The Dry Bean was frantic, panting, and angry, mostly dark and mostly clothed. But now, I take my time. I pay attention.
I look—watching the suntanned breadth of my hand wedged between soft, pale thighs, cataloging every glimpse I get of glossy pink Maddie. I commit to memory the feeling of her plump clit, her tight hole, the way her tits move with each quivering breath.
I study how she arches and gasps. I learn that she likes little breaks from her clit—short detours into her body, explorations up to her nipples and down to the pink eyelet below her pussy—and she hate-love-hates being strung along the edge, pawing uselessly at my forearm whenever I leave her teetering, her eyes flying wide to glare at me.
“Careful, Ms. Kowalczk,” I warn, my chest lifting and falling with a deep breath. “A look like that is going to earn you another swat, and I don’t care how wet that cunt is, it’s not too wet to get spanked if I say so.”
Maddie’s wide, pouty mouth falls open. “Oh my god,” she whispers.
“Oh my god.” She’s trying to get her legs wider, trying to arch harder, and I can barely breathe, I’m so fucking ravenous for this, for Maddie, my good girl, splayed open and trying to fuck my hand, vacillating between bratty and pleading.
“Please, Bram,” she’s moaning, and I’m breathing harshly, heavily, my cock thumping with need underneath her writhing body, and I can’t deny us both what we want next. This pussy, wet and clenching; my name on her lips; her eyes green and glazed and locked with mine.
I move back to her clitoris and stroke it with the strokes I now know she likes best—tight and hard—and it takes no time at all, mere seconds.
She sucks in a breath, finding my face, something like panic all over hers, and then orgasms with a cry, her stomach and thighs quaking and her knees slamming closed and trapping my hand.
I don’t stop, though, still rubbing and rubbing and watching her like I’m going to write a dissertation on Satisfied Maddie, and it’s only an eternity later, when her body finally goes still and then loosens, that I stop.
I don’t pull my hand free right away, though; I savor all the soft, wet heat.
I savor the sight of us, all of us, even though it’s so fucking depraved that I feel like a bad, bad man, with the blanket half tumbled to the floor, her tearstained face, my slippery fingers.
My shirt is still buttoned. My shoes are still on.
“Bram,” she whispers, and then she’s twisting, rearranging, straddling me in the chair.
The blanket and towel fall all the way down now; her hair has dried enough to make damp waves that trail down to her breasts and brush her nipples.
She finds my belt, my zipper, and I don’t help her; I silently watch as she spreads the placket of my trousers and pulls me out.
“Well?” I ask once she’s got my dick into the cool air of the room. The skin of my organ is stretched so tight that it nearly shines. “What are you going to do with it, Ms. Kowalczk?”
A curl pulls at her pretty lips, and my heart flips over in my chest. She’s almost smiling, and after seeing her cry that hard, an almost smile is a marvel.
“I think I need to make sure that you’re not neglecting your needs, Professor Loe,” she purrs, and then she moves so that her wet core is over my erection.
And sits on it.
I drop my head back against the chair as she starts rocking against me, my cock trapped between my stomach and her, all slick, soft pressure, and it’s almost like being inside her, almost, almost.
She reaches down, like maybe she’s thinking the same thing, and I catch her wrist.
“I haven’t been bare inside someone for years,” I grind out. “I won’t be able to stop myself.”
“What if I don’t want you to?”
“Then you’re a very bad girl. I thought you wanted to be good for me?”
“I do,” she pants, her eyes wide and green and so beautiful in the afternoon sunlight. “More than anything, but I want your cock inside me too—”
It’s too much. Her panting confession, her pretty eyes and pretty face and pretty tits. Her cunt sliding against me.
I grunt as jagged, angry bliss shreds through my stomach and tears its way up my cock, one hard jerk, and then full, thick spurts, coating her between the legs and staining my shirt.
“Fuck,” she breathes, her eyes down between us, watching my erection swell and spill, swell and spill. “That’s . . . fuck, Bram. That’s so hot.”
She pulls her wrist free of my grip and reaches down to catch some of my release on her fingertips. She licks it off, and my stomach clenches again, like my body needs to make sure that it drains every last drop around her.
The minute the orgasm lets me be, I fall back in the chair. Maddie and I are disheveled and sticky, and I can feel my heartbeat in my toes, behind my eyes, and I don’t think I ever want to move—but also, how the hell did I end up with my dick out and a naked adjunct perched on my lap?
Judging by the way Maddie’s teeth are sinking into her lower lip, I’m guessing she has the same question.
I make a decision.
“We’re both going to take a shower,” I say. “Well, another one for you. And then I’m making you coffee, and you’re going to drink it while you sit in my lap. Okay?”
She blinks, and in her eyes, I see the creeping shame and despair again, but there’s a soft kind of relief in the shape of her mouth.
“Yes, sir,” she says, and I think the sir is a game attempt to tease me, to bring some levity to the moment, but all it does is make me push us out of the chair and into the shower together, where I get to my knees and lick her clit while water runs down my face and onto my cock.
I jerk myself so that we come together, so that I can know, at least once, what it’s like to climax with Maddie’s taste on my tongue.