Chapter 21 – Juliette
TWENTY-ONE
JULIETTE
We were lying in bed two weeks later and AP was hunting our fingers.
We’d taken her to the vet only to find out she was he.
Doc Stan declared him healthy and ready to be weaned off the bottle and on to wet food.
We bought a kitty litter box, because neither one of us trusted him to be outside without us.
“What are we going to name him?”
“Ouch,” Creed said, as AP pounced with both claws onto his finger only to lock his teeth down.
“Dragonslayer,” I said.
“Seems pretentious. What about Harry?”
I shook my head as I ran my finger down his soft back, only to tweak his tail.
He immediately turned in search of his next opponent.
“Nowhere near regal enough. Can’t you come up with a Native name that speaks to your heart?
He is your first born son. What’s that thing around your neck? What about that?”
He held it up and looked at it. “It’s a bear claw. A symbol of strength for my people.”
“Your mom gave it to you?” I asked him, quietly.
He nodded. “The day I left to join the Navy.”
And he still wore it. Which told me more about his feelings toward his mom than he’d ever communicated.
“We’re not naming him Bear,” he said. “His kitten self would be offended. What about Kittten-who-eats-and-shits-a-lot?”
I scowled at him.
“What about Patch?” he offered.
“Pedantic,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Boooorrriiiinnnggg,” I sang.
He rolled out of bed and away from AP on a groan. Wearing nothing but his boxer briefs, I took a hot second to admire his body. He scooped up AP and set him on his wide shoulder. The kitten loved it when he did that because it gave him a height advantage over practically everything in the house.
“I’m calling him Patch,” he said.
“Fine. Patch. How about Aristotle Patch? Then we can keep calling him AP.”
“Fine,” he said. He turned his direction to the kitten who looked him back square in the eye. “You’re AP or Patch.”
“Meow!”
“He agrees,” Creed said. “Now we need to think about what we’re going to do with him at night.”
“Why? He’s litter box trained. As long as we keep the door open to Herb’s study-”
“It’s not Herb’s study. It’s our study. You need to stop thinking of this place as your dad’s prison.”
I sat up in bed. I liked to wear his oversized t-shirts. Because even when they were fresh out of the laundry they still smelled like him a bit.
“And start thinking of it as yours,” I quipped. Then it occurred to me I probably had to stop doing that, too. “Yeah, sorry. Force of habit.”
“Baby, you ever want to get some dick, you are going to have to figure out a way to be nicer to me. Isn’t that right, Patch? Mommy needs to be nicer to Daddy if she wants orgasms again.”
He was gently scratching my baby under his chin and Patch was fucking eating it all up.
Traitor.
“We need a little area for him to go at night.” Creed said. “Now that he’s healthy, we can set him up with a bed and shit.”
“Okay, but still in this room. I don’t want him to have separation anxiety right out of the gate.”
“Instead you want to traumatize him when he sees how hard Daddy is going to bone Mommy?”
Creed leaned over, with Patch keeping excellent balance on his shoulder, and smacked a kiss on my lips.
“You never did say if you would go out on a date with me.” I reminded me. We’d been too locked in on kitten care since that conversation by the barn. “I’ll be nice to you and everything.”
“Well, then how can a fella say no? We okay to leave him for a few hours?”
“Yeah, now that he’s eating wet food, he’ll be fine. I’ll still set him up with a safe area so he doesn’t get into trouble, though.”
“Then I’ll take you to town for dinner and a few beers,” he said. “You’re paying.”
“Me?” I squealed. “Where’s the chivalry?”
“Babe, you been skimming extra twenties out of the grocery bills for weeks now. You got plenty of cash.”
“Damnit!” I said, slapping my hands against the sheets, but not nearly as upset as I might have been. “How did you catch me?”
“Shows up as a separate line item on the bank statement.”
“Fuck. I’ve never seen a bank statement,” I mumbled.
“About that, I don’t like you being completely out of the loop on shit like that. We’ll sit down at some point and I’ll walk you through the financials of the operation.”
“What?” My brain couldn’t fathom it.
“Relax, I’m not prepared to give you my passwords. Unless you want to say right now that you trust yourself not to empty my bank account?”
Saying I wouldn’t take the money and run was like saying I was ready to commit to a lifetime of marriage to him. It went a little too far, despite the fact that we were now co-parents to Patch.
Oh, shoot. If I did run, I was going to have to take AP with me. That meant making sure I had a to-go bag for a cat.
“Yeah, I can see already, you’re planning on what you would do with the money. I’ll show you the books. Supervised. So in case anything happens to me-”
“What’s going to happen to you?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Anything. I fall off a ladder, a car accident…”
“You don’t feel safe climbing a ladder? You jumped out of planes, for Pete’s sake.”
He shucked out of his boxers, (and yes, I averted my eyes, even though at this point, I’d seen his junk before, had even touched it), and tossed them in the laundry.
Bare ass naked, he walked over to the dresser and pulled out a clean pair of underwear, socks and a black t-shirt and tossed them on the bed.
He handed me AP, who I perched on my shoulder. The view wasn’t nearly as good, so he barely tolerated me, but it was either this or the bed.
Creed found his folded jeans, which were good for at least another wear before they hit the wash, on the bench at the bottom of our bed.
He looked at me while he stepped into them. “Jules, anything can happen. You should know that better than anyone. You lost both your mom and your dad.”
“I didn’t lose my mom. She ran off with some dude when I was a kid. I don’t think that counts like a car accident.”
“You ever try and find her?” Creed asked me.
“Nope. And no, I’m not going to therapy for mommy issues. So let’s move on.”
“My mom was…not a pleasant woman. I used to get mad about it, but the older I got, I realized she was always fucking hungry, drunk or hungover. Hard to win mother of the year award when you’re living in constant depravation.
I wear the necklace…as a reminder not everyone is all bad or all good. I’m guessing your mom isn’t either.”
“Your mom didn’t leave you,” I pointed out.
Creed huffed. “Baby, there was nowhere for her to go.”
“So, you’re saying we both need therapy for our mommy issues?” I reached up and instinctively scratched AP under his chin.
“Nah. We got a cat. That should work fine.”
“Agreed. Now, let’s get back to this part about something happening to you and your fear of ladders.”
He smiled, in a way I was actually starting to think made him look not entirely ugly.
Bending down over the bed he braced his arms on either side of my hips. His face directly in front of me. Patch took the opportunity to climb on his back and down his ass to the bed.
“You worried about me, Jules? Don’t look, but that seems like a very wifely thing for you to do.”
I rolled my eyes and he kissed me. Then, like he liked it, he kissed me again. I reached my hand around the back of his neck and opened my mouth to his invading tongue. We hadn’t done this in weeks. The kissing part. The intimate stuff where he invaded my space, my mouth, and I let him.
He pushed into me and I leaned back on the headboard, my arms going around his shoulders to hold on to him.
My breasts got tight. That part between my legs started to tingle.
His hand lifted up under my shirt, his shirt, really, and cupped my breast. His thumb brushing against my now hard nipple. I wanted more pressure there.
But then he was pushing himself away until he was standing beside the bed.
His face was tight. His hands were on his hips. I glanced down at his dick and could see through his jeans he was hard as fuck.
“We could do it now,” I whispered to him, reaching for his stomach, ready to release his rather intimidating erection from the prison of his clothes.
But he grabbed my wrist and held it away from him.
“Still mad?” I asked.
How long did it take for a guy to get over his wife kissing another dude?
“No,” he said. Then his grip tightened on my wrist. “Jules, I don’t know how to do this.”
My jaw literally dropped. “Whooahh! Breaking news. Are you telling me you’re a freaking virgin, too?”
“No,” he huffed. “I’m not a virgin. My problem is, I’ve never fucked one.
When I say I don’t know how to do this, I mean I don’t know how to make this…
good for you. Like the whole fucking experience.
It’s a big deal for a girl. Or it should be.
And right now I just want to spread your legs and fill you with my cock. ”
“I think most girls with any sense just want to get it over with that first time. So they can get to the good part. We should have just done it on my birthday,” I admitted. “Then it would have been the whole experience and stuff. Now, I’m starting to get nervous again.”
He sighed, his head dropping. “Okay. You’re right. We’re making too big of a deal out of it. Let’s just fuck.”
He let go of my hand and reached for the top button on his jeans.
Wait. What? Now. Like now, now? Holy shit, it was going to happen now?
“What about AP?”
Creed lifted him off the bed and took him to the bathroom. He loved it in there because the tile on the floor was cool. He shut the door behind him and came back to the bed. He shucked off his jeans and pushed his boxer briefs down around his ankles where he could kick them off.
“Hold on, wait a second. This seems…fast.”
“You said you wanted to get it over with. Two seconds ago you said we should do it now.”