Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Autumn
After we’ve all helped clean up the kids’ mess, Forest gathers their bags.
Sebastian sways where he stands, exhausted after all the fun he’s had.
I’m ready for bed myself, in desperate need of some blessed silence.
When we’ve all said our goodbyes, the families going their separate ways, I approach Forest to pass Benjamin to him, though I don’t particularly want to.
Josephine steps between us and slips her hand in mine, beaming up at me.
Forest and I exchange a long, silent look that’s interrupted when Mom says, “I’ll help you get the kids home, Forest.” She tips her head toward Sebastian, who’s practically falling asleep on his feet. To me, she says, “You can go on and head home, honey.”
Josephine’s smile falls, and she clings to my arm.
“I don’t mind helping,” I say quickly, to Mom’s surprise, and Josephine perks up.
Josephine skips ahead of me and Benjamin down the street while Forest carries Sebastian, who didn’t fight or cry when Forest picked him up, immediately falling asleep in his arms. In the nursery, Forest and I move quietly as we get the boys dressed in clean pajamas and put them to bed.
I whisper a goodnight and unthinkingly lean over the crib’s railing to kiss Benjamin’s cheek.
And because I kissed his, it only feels right to kiss Sebastian’s, lightly running the tips of my fingers through his fine hair, before I tiptoe out of the nursery.
I swiftly move past Forest in the hallway, but Josephine stops me from leaving when she calls out my name. She’s changed into a princess nightgown, sitting on the edge of her bed, and she holds out her hairbrush.
“Will you braid my hair? Daddy does it, but he’s not very good.”
“Geez, thanks, kid,” Forest jokes with an attempt at a smile, though worry lines his mouth. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but something inside me dips at his expression.
I take the hairbrush and ease onto the bed to sit behind Josephine when she turns to the side.
I’ve had plenty of practice braiding my sisters’ and nieces’ hair—sometimes even Brady’s, when he lets me bribe him into it.
I make quick work of it, tying the French braid off with the silky pink scrunchie her dad hands to me.
Once done, Josephine turns and hugs me tightly. “What time are we going to get our nails done?” she asks, scooching up the bed to get under her covers.
“Ten o’clock,” I say, standing and glancing at the painting she’s taped low on the wall at the head of her bed.
It’s masterful how quickly she was able to work it up.
She may only be ten, but I get the sense I could learn much more than a thing or two from her, which I like the idea of quite a bit.
“I’ll come by to pick you up so we can ride together with the girls, if your daddy says it’s okay. ”
Forest nods his approval.
“Yay!” Josephine lifts her arms when Forest bends to hug her and say goodnight after turning out the light. She reaches for me for a second hug that I, of course, give her, and I impulsively kiss her cheek as I did the boys’.
A flash goes off behind me, and I jerk back, pinching my lips tight when I catch Forest shoving his phone in his back pocket, his face draining of color. Josephine is asleep by the time I close the door quietly, and I rush toward Forest, who’s pacing in the living room.
“Give me your phone,” I demand.
Forest trips over his feet as he backs away. “No.”
I advance on him and hiss, “If you’re taking pictures of me, it’s my right to see them.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “I wasn’t.”
“Liar.” The back of his head bounces against the front door when I pin him to it. “Give. Me. Your. Phone. And so help you, if there are any pictures of my feet, you’re going to pay for them.”
“I didn’t—I wouldn’t!”
I strike, shoving my hand into his back pocket to steal his phone.
“Fuck, Autumn.” He scrambles to take it from me, lifting his arm high in the air, holding it far out of my reach.
“Oh, you think you’re smart, do you?” With Bailey being so much taller than me, often playing monkey with my toys when we were kids, I’ve learned plenty of ways to get what I want.
Forest doesn’t see it coming when I simultaneously jam the fingers on my left hand into his armpit to tickle him, and grip his hair with my right hand, yanking his head down by his roots.
“Let go,” he squeals, laughing between grunts of pain as I tug on his thick but silky strands. He loses his grip on his phone, which goes skating across the floor.
“Ha!” I make a mad dash for it, but as soon as I bend and get my fingers around it, Forest grabs me around the waist, hoisting me up and away.
I buck and kick my feet in the air until he drops me.
The moment he goes for his phone, diving on top of it, I jump on his back.
It’s a mad tussle, the phone repeatedly getting knocked away.
I end up on my stomach, trying to army crawl out from under his big body, when he gives me a taste of my own medicine, tickling me.
“Dammit, Forest!” I hate being tickled, but, of course, it makes me laugh uncontrollably, which only pisses me off further.
I brace my hands on the floor and shove upward, knocking him off my back, then lunge for the phone again, which has slid into the kitchen.
As soon as I have it, I whirl to Forest, who’s crawling across the floor as he tries to get up.
I growl, shove him backward, and sit on his chest. Caging his arms in between my knees, I quickly press his phone against his face so the Face ID will unlock it.
Forest stops fighting, his lips parted, breathing hard, pupils blown wide. “Angel,” he says with a raspy voice.
“I’m not an angel,” I whisper as my pulse sprints instead of slowing after our scuffle, forgetting the phone. “You know that better than anyone.”
The corner of his mouth turns down. “At work, maybe. But here, with the kids, you are. You can’t help it. It’s in your nature.”
“That’s different. Kids are innocent. Men are not,” I say.
I learned that lesson the night one of my closest male friends, Tobias—or rather, the man who was lying in wait, pretending to be my friend—confessed he was in love with me after walking me home from study group.
When I told him I wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship, he got in my face and called me a “fat, ugly bitch” who should know how “lucky” I was that a “nice guy” like him would ever pay attention to me.
It was dark, and we were the only two people around.
I’d never been more scared to be alone with a man.
I tried to run inside my dorm building, but he grabbed my elbow and yanked me to the side toward the bushes, leaving bruises on my arm.
He didn’t expect me to put up a fight. I clawed his face, then punched his throat so hard that he choked and fell backward, cracking his head on the sidewalk.
He’s the very reason why I don’t go anywhere without my bear spray.
I shudder and brace my hands on Forest’s shoulders, the heated tension in the air breaking, intending to finally, finally, get off of him…but that’s as far as I get. I can’t move, completely arrested by his expression—the same one he’s given me since I first walked into his house last weekend.
Forest gulps and says quietly, his voice husky, “I’ve seen enough to know that you are an angel, even if you try to hide it behind all your smartass remarks.
” He inhales deeply through his nose, and I stop breathing.
Forest lightly slides his hands up the backs of my thighs, where my dress has ridden up to my hips.
When I don’t stop him—why haven’t I stopped him?
—he moves his hands farther up to cup my bare asscheeks with a groan, jerking me forward so that his chin brushes my thong.
“I also know that if you don’t get up right now, I’ll beg you to ride my face while I eat your angel pussy. ”
I gasp, and my hands slip off his shoulders. Flattening my palms on the floor so I don’t faceplant into the tile, my mind spins, because what the fuck? How did we get here? And most importantly, why can’t I think straight and run far, far away?
“Oh, fuck, angel,” he says. “You didn’t get up.” Forest rips my thong to the side from behind, lifts me by a few inches, and slides his tongue between my pussy lips.
I’ve never felt anything like it, and I clench my thighs with a little squeal when Forest hooks his arms around my thighs, crushing my lower half to his face so he can explore more of me.
“Forest, yes!” My elbows buckle at the bizarre sensation, his breath hot when he exhales against me.
I have to brace myself on one forearm and shove my fist into my mouth to cut off the high-pitched moan bursting out of me when he pushes past my entrance and thrusts his wet tongue inside me.
Oh god, I’ve been missing out all these years!
I might be inexperienced with anything other than my vibrator, but that doesn’t mean I’m sheltered, and I’m not going to be a passenger the first time I allow a man to touch me.
I widen my knees and reach between my legs to grip Forest’s hair, then rock my hips experimentally.
Forest yells something beneath me, his fingers digging deeper into my thighs. Figuring I must be suffocating him, I lift my ass maybe an inch to give him some breathing room.
“No!” He jerks me back down, thrusting his tongue as deep as it will go.
My eyes roll back in my head as I take him for a ride, twisting my hips until I find just the right angle that has pleasure building rapidly in my core, my pussy pulsing with heat and desire. I tug his hair when he moves his head too far to the side, and he immediately reverts to where I want him.
“Right there,” I say with a breathy moan, loosening my tight hold on his hair to instead slip my fingers through his strands. “Don’t stop, baby. Just like that.”