Chapter Nineteen #2
Her top teeth bite into her bottom lip, and I want nothing more than to pluck it out and bite it myself. “That’s not a bad idea,” she surmises, examining her dirty clothes.
I lean against the counter. “You’re a natural with her,” I comment, regaining her attention.
“I know you told me once that you didn’t know if you’d be a good mom, but you’ve got the maternal instinct that will make you a wonderful mother someday, Honor.
You were patient with Gemma. You helped her the thousands of times she asked you to, even when you knew she could do something herself.
I have no doubt that, despite your circumstances growing up, you’d be the kind of mom any child would be lucky to have. ”
The way Honor stares at me with a gaping, flushed expression makes me wonder if I crossed a line that I shouldn’t have. I mean every word I say, but maybe it’s not mine to give.
A quiet, sharp breath exhales from her after a long moment of staring. “Bodhi…” The way she says my name is breathless, as if she can’t believe I’d say that.
Then, she does something I don’t expect.
She walks up to me, palms the hem of my shirt with her hands, and pulls me down to meet her lips. It takes me a few, long seconds to fend off the surprise of the kiss before cupping her face and returning it greedily.
My body backs hers into the wall by the stairwell, pushing myself against her front until she can feel exactly what her mouth, no matter how tentative it moves over mine, does to me.
There’s no mistaking the erection pressed against her, or her moan that I swallow with my tongue as I roll into her pelvis.
The kiss goes from cautious and slow to fast and heated in a matter of seconds.
Her fingers clench the fabric of my shirt like she wants me as close as humanly possible.
I taste the inside of her mouth—the cinnamon from the cookies she ate, and the chocolate that Gemma would sneak for them when she thought I wasn’t looking—and have to do everything in my power to remember that Gemma is still sleeping on the couch.
Pulling away takes a lot of willpower. Willpower I don’t know I have. I lean my forehead against hers and breathe deeply, closing my eyes and listening to her haphazard breath bounce off me.
In a low, husky voice, I rasp, “You have no idea what I would do to you if my daughter wasn’t sleeping on the couch.
If she were anywhere else, literally fucking anywhere, I would get on my knees for you, Honor.
I would bury my face in your pussy and make you come like you have never come before. Neither one of us would be the same.”
The thought alone makes me steel in my pants. It’s painful, but it grounds me. Reminds me where I am. Where my daughter is.
If Honor and I do this, I want to do it right. Romanticize her. Take her out. Dote on her. Take her to bed and spend hours making her fall apart with my fingers and mouth long before I ever take my cock out to make her come with it.
Honor exhales shakily, and I swear I feel her nipples against my chest. It does little to ease the boner I’m not sure will go away anytime soon. I’m going to have a bad case of blue balls for the foreseeable future thinking about this moment.
“It would be that life-changing?” she whispers, her fingers tightening and loosing around my shirt.
“Something tells me we’d both be ruined.”
When I look at her, really look, I see the puffiness of her lips. Victory swells in my chest, and I grin knowing I did that to her. I’m the reason for the way her chest rises and falls in an uneven pattern, and the reason for the glaze in her brown eyes.
It’s a powerful feeling—one that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. When she goes home, this will be spank bank material for an indefinite time to come until I finally get to feel what it’s like to make her orgasm.
I take a step back, blowing out a long breath to collect myself. “You should go take a shower.”
Before I maul you against the wall and beg you to let me fuck you over the kitchen counter.
I don’t add that last part.
But damn am I picturing it.
Just like I’m picturing her naked in my shower…and in multiple positions around my house. And my mind also conjures what she’ll look like in my clothes, which is almost as dangerous as imaging her naked. I want to know what she feels like around my cock. What she’ll taste like on my tongue.
I fucking need to know.
My fists clench and unclench.
Christ, I’m horny.
Honor closes her eyes and nods. “You’re probably right,” she agrees. I see her throat bob, as if she’s struggling with this too. “I just… It means a lot. What you said.”
When she opens her eyes, the glaze is still there, but the lust has eased enough for at least one of us to see reason.
“I thought about motherhood since I was a kid,” she admits, nibbling her bottom lip into her mouth.
“I wanted to prove to myself that I could be a better one than my own mom. It was sort of a petty reason, I guess. But it never really dwindled. When I got married, I thought there was a chance it would happen. Once we were settled. Once we were a little older. I’m glad it didn’t.
Divorces when kids are involved is…” She shakes her head.
“It’s not good. So, I’m grateful I didn’t have to add that chaos to my already messed-up life.
In fact, things got so muddled with Max and I that I stopped thinking about kids altogether.
But never stopped wondering if I would be a good parent.
If I could provide them with the kind of security that I lacked. So you telling me that I can…”
Her words trail off, and she closes her eyes. I can tell there’s more, so I brush fallen hair away from her face and tuck it behind her ear. “Talk to me, Honor.”
It feels like a lot longer than a few seconds before she speaks. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about kids again. And how I want that life. I want to be the best person possible for my family.”
I stare at her, feeling something deep within me stretch out and wrap around her. An invisible force that ties us together. It’s strong. Impenetrable. If I thought I had it bad for this girl before, it doesn’t compare to now.
“What do you think changed that?” I ask, wanting nothing more than to hear her say, “you”.
But she doesn’t.
She doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t need to.
Her eyes drift to me, then to the direction of the living where my six-year-old is sleeping peacefully under a knit blanket that my mother made for her.
It’s purple and frilly, and doesn’t match anything in my living room, but Gemma loves it.
She won’t sit on the couch and watch a movie without it draped over her lap.
Honor may not give me a straight answer, but I know what it is regardless.
“Fuck it,” I breathe out, claiming her mouth again and trailing my hands over the curves of her torso and hips. The soft, fleshy feeling under my fingertips feels right as her mouth parts to make room for my tongue to explore her.
Her hips arch into me, brushing against the bulge that I can no longer hide. I bite back my groan as she grinds into me, and I decide to give her a taste of her own medicine.
When I move away, she makes a sound of protest that makes me grin. But it’s quickly replaced by a wistful inhale as my fingers find the button of her jeans and pop it open before I slide the zipper down. “Okay?” I ask.
Her throat bobs, but she eventually offers me a silent, shaky nod.
“I need to hear you say it, honey,” I tell her, letting my knuckles graze her core over the denim until she’s squirming against the wall. “I need you to tell me that it’s okay for me to touch your cunt. Say yes. One fucking word, Honor, and it’s yours.”
Her eyes widen. “Y-Yes. You can.”
My eyebrows go up. “I can what, Honor?”
She exhales slowly, wiggling against me for friction, for anything to give her relief. “You can touch my cunt. I want you to. Please.”
I grin at her breathy plea before my hands slides into the hem of her jeans and beneath her panties.
The cotton is soaked as my fingertips dance along the seam of her lips.
Her thighs clench around me, trapping my palm against her warmth.
“Did you change you mind?” I ask, brushing my lips against her jaw.
They trail down to the crook of her neck, nipping once above the pulse and causing her hips to thrust and bring my fingers even closer to her entrance.
“No,” she whispers, wrapping an arm around my neck and squeezing me against her. “It’s just been a really long time since anyone…” She stops, swallows, and says, “Since anyone other than me has touched me there.”
Jesus fucking Chr— “You have no clue how happy I am to hear that,” I reply against her throat, trying my hardest not to sink my teeth into her skin and leave a mark.
She doesn’t get a chance to ask why before my finger slowly slides inside her as my thumb makes lazy circles around her clit. Each motion is slow and smooth, and her silent open-mouthed moans tell me she loves them as much as I do.
“I want nothing more than to sink inside you,” I say, lips moving against her ear as my hand works her core.
“To feel you contract around me. To listen to you come undone around my cock. I’ve been dreaming about it, Honor.
What it would be like. I can’t wait for the day I get to experience it.
To hear you scream my name as you milk me of every fucking drop of come I have. ”
She sucks in a breath as her pussy tightens around my digit.
“You like that, don’t you? You like the idea of me begging to bury my dick inside you until I come, huh?”
She tries to match my pace with her hips, and I can see it on her face. She’s at the brink, so close to completely falling off the edge of nothingness.
And I want her to.
I want to feel it.
To watch her.
“Eyes on me, honey,” I command as her body starts quivering. “I want to see you come on my fingers. I want to know what you look like when you soak me.”
That’s all it takes. Her head tilts back as her orgasm hits her, and it’s the single most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
A lump forms in my throat that I try swallowing in order to sound halfway normal after she becomes sated. “I think we should go out.”
I withdraw my hand and bring my finger to my mouth, watching her eyes widen as I lick her arousal off.
“Let me take you out on a date,” I tell her, grinning as her eyes lock on the finger that was just inside her. “Dinner. A movie. A walk. Hell, I’ll take you to the aquarium if that’s where you want to go. But I want to spend time with you. I want to get to know you. If you’ll let me.”
There’s a lot more I’d like to do with her, but I keep those dirty thoughts locked up for now. If she agrees, she’ll learn them soon enough. If I’m lucky, she’ll let me play them out and experience them firsthand.
I can’t quite tell the emotions passing over Honor’s face, or what’s going on in her head. She’s overthinking. That much I can tell.
“I don’t know what specifically happened between you and Max.
” Even saying his name makes me pissed off, and I have to refrain from clenching my fists as I readjust her jeans, zip them up, and button them.
“But I will do everything in my power not to hurt you like he did. Not to give up on you. I’m simply asking for a chance to prove to you that there are good people out there who can give you everything you want and then some. ”
Another sharp exhale comes from her. “It’s been so long since I’ve dated that I don’t know how to do it anymore,” she admits.
When was the last time I went on a date? I’m not counting the one I made her go on with me to show Olive I’m over our past, or any of the other dinners we’ve been to together since her father dragged us together at the aquarium. “I guess we can figure it out together then, honey.”
Her eyes flicker up to meet mine. “You don’t…date?”
I lift a shoulder. “I’ve never been that interested in putting myself out there. Not until recently.”
Not until you.
I don’t have to say the words for her to understand what I mean.
“So,” I say softly. “Will you go on a date with me, Honor Marie Erikson?”
She blinks. “That isn’t my middle name.”
“I didn’t know it, so I guessed,” I admit with a small smile that she returns. “See, that’s one more thing we can learn about each other over dinner.”
A small laugh escapes her. “It’s Ophelia. My mom had a thing for Shakespeare, remember?”
Slowly, my eyebrows go up as I repeat her full name in my head. “Your initials are H.O.E?”
She cringes. “Cruel, isn’t it?”
My smile only blossoms. “I kind of like it. And you never answered my question. Will you go on a date with me, Hoe?”
Honor gives me a bland look. “Only if you never call me that again, Hoffman.”
I hold out my hand—the same one I just used to get her off. The same one I want nothing more than to wrap around my cock and get myself off with too. “You’ve got a deal, honey.”