Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I put down my phone and turned to her. “It’s delicious, isn’t it?”
She bobbed her head and drank her juice.
I wanted to give her all the chocolate milk in the world.
“Ash loves it too. He would drink it all the time if he could, day and night.”
That earned me a blush and the quickest of smiles.
I’ll never forget that night. We stayed at your parents’ house, and the moment we were alone in one of the guest rooms, we didn’t let each other go. We didn’t speak for at least an hour either. We couldn’t. Our minds had entered the race of a lifetime in order to make this work. It was everything we wanted. We wanted to be their parents.
Instead of using words, we reminded each other with touch. When I sighed, you squeezed me harder on the bed. When I sensed your restlessness, I cupped your cheek and pressed my lips to your jaw.
We always charged our batteries together.
CHAPTER 5
Six years ago
Arlington
Ash Riley
“Don’t forget your backpack, honey.”
“Oh, shoot!” Hallie grabbed her pack before I shut the door.
“Do you really think Dad can fix the banister before we get home?” Dylan asked, shouldering his own backpack.
“No way,” I laughed. “I’ll fix it after work.”
Nate had other strengths. Carpentry and home renovations weren’t two of them. And lord knew our house needed more of both. Four years in that house, and we were still preparing it for future owners. But that was the price we’d had to pay for a quick move all those years ago. We hadn’t exactly scored our dream house.
Hallie slipped her hand into mine as we headed for their school, and she asked if we could buy a new lunch box this weekend, because the latch on her current one was broken.
“I’ll add it to the list,” I confirmed. “We gotta pick up a gift for your cousin anyway.”
Much to our parents’ delight, Theo had finally settled down. Six weeks after he’d joined us in Virginia last year, we’d hammered out the details for our scaffolding business, and he’d gone out to celebrate, only to meet a nice woman he’d knocked up shortly thereafter.
“Can I pick the gift, Daddy? I know what girls like,” Hallie said.
I smiled down at the squirt, intrigued. “I haven’t seen you play with dolls since you discovered video games and got your first ant farm. Ain’t a whole lot there a newborn will like.”
She waved me off with the confidence only an eight-year-old could possess. When the world was black and white, and only one perspective existed. Their own.
“I saw a stuffie at Target,” she answered.
All right, then. At least it was age-appropriate.
Drop-off went smooth as usual, except Dylan wanted to walk the last bit to his classroom on his own these days. It was what his friends were doing. Parents weren’t cool anymore.
Nate would pick them up this afternoon, and I’d see them after work, which always felt too far away.
Oh, how fucking ironic, running into Reid at lunch. On the same day Nate had gently reminded me we hadn’t attended a kink party in ages. Reid and his buddy Max ran a kink community over in Alexandria, and if I were a good partner, I’d go over to Reid’s table and ask when the next munch was.
He was a building inspector, and we’d crossed paths at worksites countless times before we found ourselves in the same food truck line, bonding over the fact that we each had a son named Dylan.
Fun times.
But I didn’t go over to him in the packed diner. Instead, we exchanged nods and typical “ah, you again” grins before we focused on our lunches. I had twenty minutes before I had to get back to work across the street, and this diner had a burger with my name on it.
Besides, we didn’t fucking have time for kink these days. Between work, the kids, marches in support of legalizing gay marriage across the country, finalizing the adoption process for Dylan and Hallie, reentering the foster care system to expand our family, and occasionally dressing up to have dinner with Nate in a restaurant that didn’t have a kids’ menu, kink was the last thing on my mind.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure we could go further anyway. We were secure enough in our relationship to have casual fun with subs and Littles together—but we had zero time for that. Nate attended bondage nights every now and then at various events around the city, but to be perfectly honest, they bored me. Bondage to Nathan was…fuck, like meditation. He grew introspective and superfocused while he tied up men and women in all kinds of ropes and patterns. I fed off reactions and emotions; I needed shit wild and rough. Like the takedown event we’d attended a few years ago when we’d visited friends in Boston. We’d hunted down a friend’s sub, and we’d all had fun with him.