An Innocent Thanksgiving (Holiday Heat Book 2) Page 18

  Maggie seemed to consider this. She interlinked our fingers and tipped her head back to rest it on my shoulder. “I want to feel… safe,” she said, after a long, quiet moment. “You make me feel safe. And I want to feel you. I was looking forward to showing that lingerie off for you, to being all sexy, I wanted to—to have that with you. I don’t want Leo to have taken that from us. Does that make sense? I don’t want him to have that kind of power over me, or us, I want us to continue on as if he’s nothing because he is nothing, really. He’s a nobody. He’s pathetic.”

  I was struck all over again by how brave Maggie was. “Do you know what an amazing person you are?” I mused, kissing slowly up her neck.

  Maggie scoffed and I couldn’t see it but I was pretty sure she was rolling her eyes.

  “I mean it,” I told her, my lips brushing against her with every word I said. Maggie shivered. “You went after me even though you had no idea if I would reciprocate, you put it all on the line. And then after I was hurtful and rejected the idea of us you didn’t break down. You were courageous and mature about it. And you chose to raise a child all on your own, and to grow up faster than you had to because of it. You’ve done all of this hard work by yourself. And then—after what just happened—fuck, nobody could blame you for breaking down but you didn’t. You helped me move everything, you called the police, you took care of things.”

  Maggie turned her head so that our lips brushed together. “You really are wondrous,” I told her.

  “I think you’re not so bad yourself,” Maggie replied, and her voice was a little strained like she was trying to make it teasing but instead it came out as low and soft. Heavy with meaning.

  I slid my hand down her body, teasing at the hem of her underwear. “Are you sure you want…” I started, but Maggie fondly rolled her eyes at me. I grinned. “Well, all right then.”

  I ran my fingers over her body, drawing close to where she wanted me, but not actually touching her. Maggie mewled, pushing back against me, grinding her ass against my cock so that I started to get harder. That minx. Turnabout was fair play though, I supposed, and I was teasing her.

  All right then. Time to stop teasing.

  I slid my hand between her legs and drew my fingers up and down along her folds through the lace of her underwear, rubbing at her clit. Maggie gasped, arching, and I ground my cock against her ass in slow, rolling movements.

  “Cal,” she gasped, and fuck, I was never going to get tired of hearing my name in her voice like that. “This was—this was what I was hoping—when I changed into the lingerie—I wanted you to just… just take me…”

  “You’re lucky I’m considerate about how expensive these probably were,” I noted. “Because otherwise I’d rip them off you.”

  Maggie whimpered like that was one of the hottest things she’d ever heard. I rubbed at her clit directly with the pads of two of my fingers and she seized up, gasping and trembling. “Cal—Cal, I’m—I’m gonna—”

  After the night she’d had, I figured she deserved a sweet, sharp little orgasm to help take the edge off. “Go ahead,” I coaxed, seizing her earlobe in my teeth and tugging. “Come for me, baby girl.”

  Maggie moaned and went boneless in my arms, sagging back against me, as I rubbed her straight off the edge and into orgasm. She looked fantastic like this, relaxing, giving herself over to the pleasure. I wanted her to forget all about the unpleasantness of earlier tonight. I wanted her to forget what it had felt like to have that man’s hands on her for even a second. I wanted her to only know pleasure.

  I kissed along her neck as she rode out her orgasm, clinging to me, like I was her ship in a storm. I loved how much she trusted me, how much she let me do to her, and see of her.

  “You still up for more?” I asked. If she wasn’t then I wouldn’t press. It had been a long night for both of us, but especially for her.

  Maggie pulled herself up and nodded. “I want you, all of you,” she told me earnestly, tilting her head back to stare up into my eyes.

  And, well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. Not at all.

  28

  Maggie

  I appreciated how careful and gentle Cal was being, how devoted to my pleasure he was. Like his own (obvious) needs didn’t matter, so long as I felt good and was taken care of.

  I wanted him inside of me, though. After tonight, after feeling so threatened, after someone I didn’t want at all had gotten so close to me, I wanted instead to be with someone that I did want. I wanted Cal’s touch and love to replace whatever ugliness Leo had tried to intrude into my life.

  Cal picked me up and playfully tossed me onto the bed, making me shriek in surprise. I clapped a hand over my mouth, laughing, as Cal shushed me. He was grinning with mirth. “Can’t wake up Fern!” he whispered.

  He kissed me then, and we kept giggling as we got each other’s clothes off. This was the start of the rest of our lives together. We had told my parents, Leo was gone, and nothing was between us anymore. I felt giddy, drunk, high as a kite.

  We rolled over and over, him on top, then me, the two of us taking turns to grind against each other. He almost slipped into me a few times, his cock right up against my hot, wet pussy, and the tease of it, the hardness of it rubbing up against my clit, made me even wetter. God, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.

  Cal kissed me again and rolled us a final time, only stopping so that we were sideways, with me gathered into his arms. He kissed the curve of my ear, and then I felt him line up his cock. It was terribly intimate like this, every part of us intertwined, and I knew that was why he was doing it. We both wanted to be as close as possible to each other.

  He slid into me slowly, like he wanted to take his time, but I was so wet and ready for him, so used to him inside me, that he just sank all the way in, one smooth glide that stole the breath right out of my lungs.

  For a moment we just lay there, holding each other, and then, as if reading each other’s minds, we began to move together.

  There were no words. We didn’t need any. Cal kissed my neck, the slope of my shoulder, everywhere that he could reach. We thrust into each other, giving and receiving, and I slid my hand down to intertwine our fingers where his hand rested over my stomach, squeezing. Cal shuddered, mouthing at my shoulder. Yes, yes. It felt so good, so wonderful, like we were just one person instead of two, like this was how we were created, molded so that we would fit together like two perfect puzzle pieces.

  I couldn’t even tell who came first. It was all just a haze of pleasure, rolling along like waves, my orgasm building and then sustaining like a high note in a song. Cal spilled inside of me sticky-sweet, and I sighed and trembled, loving that feeling, almost wanting him to stay inside of me forever, keeping himself joined to me. It was nothing short of powerful.

  We lay there afterwards, neither of us speaking, just holding and being held by each other. Eventually I got up and found something to wipe us off with, glancing at myself in the bathroom mirror as I did so. I looked… not just happy, but content. Blissful.

  Once, I had never expected to feel this way. Now it felt like the new normal. And wasn’t that a wonder? I could hardly believe it had happened, like some kind of miracle.

  Cal called out softly to me, and I returned the washcloth to the sink and hurried back towards the bed. My orgasm had felt like it had gone on for an hour, and I still felt my legs shaking, trembling, ready to give out on me, and my breath was hardly there. Like I’d run a marathon.

  I sank back down onto the bed, trying to get my breath back. I hoped that it would be like this with Cal every time—different from the other times but equally wonderful. When we’d first slept together, later on I had convinced myself that it was so magical to me because it was just my first time. Because I’d never experienced something like that before. Like the first time you saw a movie or went on a rollercoaster. Part of the whole thrill was the novelty of it—novelty that could quickly wear off.

  But this hadn’t worn
off. The moment that I had seen him again, I had wanted him, just as strongly as before. And the sex hadn’t been disappointing, not once. Now, though, there was something more to it. Something that had been building every time we joined together, until it spilled over, undeniable.

  I turned my head to face Cal, curling into him. His arms came around me automatically, as if he had been waiting with bated breath for me to turn to him. Maybe he had been. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get over how ready and willing Cal was to jump into this with both feet. I’d worried that it was just his guilt, making up for what he’d done, but the look of happiness on his face when we spent time together, and when he was with Fern, told me otherwise. He was doing this because he genuinely wanted to. Not out of any sense of obligation, but from joy and the desire to.

  Cal’s arms secured themselves around me and I felt safe and cared for. This was what I had always imagined for myself as a teenager, but I had never, I think, truly believed that it would happen. How many people got to say that? How many people got to say that their teenage crush and all the daydreams that had gone with it came true?

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I told him. “I wanted us to focus on getting together and all of that.”

  “It’s not your fault, babe, you don’t need to apologize.” Cal kissed my forehead. “This was all one person’s doing and he’s gone now. You’re going to sue him into the next decade.” He tightened his grip on me. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hate the idea that you were threatened or scared, even for a moment.”

  “But you protected me, you took care of me.”

  “Of course I did. I always will.” Cal brought a hand up to gently card his fingers through my hair. “I suppose there was a silver lining to it. You ended up here.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” I told him, laughing slightly. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”

  “I won’t give up until I get my family under my roof,” Cal replied, teasing me. His fingertips trailed down my body, tickling me, and I squirmed, laughing. Cal grinned at me in delight, looking boyish in the moonlight spilling through the window with his eyes crinkled up at the corners, his smile deep and wide. I smacked his hands away, grinning right back at him.

  “Behave.”

  “You seem to like it when I misbehave, though… which is it?” Cal put on an exaggeratedly thoughtful face.

  I smacked him lightly on the arm. “You’re the worst.” Then I sobered up. “But, seriously, Cal. Are you sure about this? That this is what you want? Having a wife and a daughter might make the whole… carefree artist life a little less possible.”

  Cal was shaking his head before I had even finished speaking. “I did all of that. I had my time. You two are the best things to ever happen to me and I wouldn’t trade you two for anything. I like having people to care for. And who’s to say that I have to compromise? I want to travel the world again, but with you two—I want to show you all the places that I went to before. I want to take you to gallery openings. Fern’s already inspiring new artwork in me. I’m not yearning to give into wanderlust and jaunt off somewhere. My home and my life are with you.”

  My heart felt like it was overflowing with the things he was saying. I pulled him to me and we kissed again, slow and deep. Every brush of his lips against mine seemed to make me feel even more alive.

  “Besides…” Cal said around another kiss, tugging playfully at my bottom lip, “I have an idea for a whole new series of nudes. Can you guess who inspired that?”

  I laughed, pulling back as Cal began to slowly peel the sheets off me, revealing my body to his hungry gaze. “You’d think you’d be able to paint me from memory by now,” I told him.

  “I probably could,” Cal quipped in reply. “But I enjoy looking at you far too much to deprive myself.”

  He finished drawing the sheets off of me and I shivered as his gaze trailed along my body. His fingers followed, and I could feel myself starting to get wet again, teased by his feather-light touch. “Look your fill, then,” I told him, my voice coming out breathier, more seductive, than I had intended.

  “Now that, my love,” Cal said, looking up to lock his eyes with mine, “is impossible.”

  I felt overjoyed and turned on and like I might cry, all at once, as Cal surged forward and kissed me. I impatiently pulled him into me, drew him up and into me, gasping as he slid inside of me once again.

  We made love like tangling moonbeams, in the soft darkness of the bedroom—our bedroom—and when I came, it was staring at Cal’s smile.

  Epilogue: Maggie

  My feet were annoyingly swollen, and it was a struggle to fit them into the white satin shoes I’d gotten for today. I had done my best to plan for the whole pregnancy thing but it was hard to predict what my measurements would be months down the road, unlike most women who were getting wedding dresses fitted.

  Luckily, I had gone with a very simple dress and ensemble for this very reason. Something that draped and was loose, so that it didn’t look like I’d been vacuum-sealed into a dress while a beach ball was tied to my stomach.

  I stood up, wincing as my back protested. It was a tie between the back aches and the swollen feet on which I hated the most about being pregnant. Even though I was overall excited to have another baby. Cal and I didn’t want more than two, but I knew that he was over the moon to be able to be there for the entire process this time. He loved Fern terribly, just as I did, but it saddened him that he hadn’t seen her as a baby, as a toddler. Hadn’t seen her say her first word or take her first steps. He would, though, for this baby. And he obviously couldn’t wait. I was pretty sure that he was more excited in some ways for the baby than he was for the wedding.

  Not that I blamed him. Unlike most couples, for us the wedding was more of an excuse to gather together the people that we loved than it was anything else. We were living together, we had a kid together already and then another one on the way. All the things that most people did after a wedding we had already done.

  This was still a special day, though. A day to gather our friends and family, and to make everything official.

  Cal was making the entire process wonderfully easy, too. Being pregnant was bad enough on its own. So was planning a wedding. Putting the two together was absolutely nuts. But Cal was there for me the entire way, offering to talk to people, securing the venue, massaging my feet and back when they ached. He’d been an absolute godsend.

  I knew he was going to keep being one—being the perfect husband, just as he’d been the perfect boyfriend. And father. God, how Fern loved him. It had been so much easier to tell her than I’d feared. For all that Fern liked Cal, I had never spoken to her about her father. I had just said that some families were different. Some had two moms and two dads, some had a mom and a dad and then there was a divorce and the mom got a new husband, and some families were just a mom and her little girl. Fern had always accepted that. Why wouldn’t she? She was a toddler, she accepted whatever her mom told her.

  What if she had wanted her family to just be the two of us? What if she didn’t want a father, or didn’t accept Cal as her father no matter how well they got along?

  I shouldn’t have worried, though. Fern was ecstatic to hear about it. We hadn’t told her the full story of course. She’d hear about it when she was older and could actually understand it. We’d explained that Cal didn’t know Fern was his daughter. Didn’t know he was a father. And now that he knew, he was ready and happy to be her father, because he loved her and he loved me.

  Fern had been ecstatic. She’d wanted us to get married sooner than anyone, and she’d felt extra special that she got to see the wedding and be a part of it because most kids came after the wedding.

  “You all ready?” Jenn asked.

  “I think so.” I glanced at myself in the mirror, suddenly unsure about all the choices I had made in my appearance. Should my hair be different? My makeup? Did I look…

  “You look beautiful,” Jenn said, laughing a
little. “I can see the fear in your eyes, you look like a deer in the headlights. C’mon, this is going to be perfect. And the sooner you get out there the sooner you can have that pumpkin pie you’ve been talking about nonstop.”

  “It’s called a food craving, Jenn, have some sympathy,” I replied, pretending to be cranky about it. It was true, one of my latest weird pregnancy cravings was for pumpkin pie. Dad promised he’d made an entire pie just for me to have.

  I was probably one of the only brides to have a wedding on Thanksgiving, but it had just seemed appropriate. Thanksgiving was when Cal and I had first gotten together and created Fern. It was when we’d found each other again. And it was a day of thanks and family—what better day to celebrate our family that we’d created, and talk about how grateful we were for each other in front of everyone?

  Jenn helped me to adjust myself so that I was all ready to go, and then Dad came to walk me down the aisle. We weren’t doing anything fancy, hosting our wedding at a small bed and breakfast in Cincinnati. Jenn was my maid of honor, of course, but she was also the only bridesmaid. Besides Fern, who was the flower girl. There weren’t any groomsmen and the guest list was short. We didn’t really want this to be a crazy big deal. Just a small, lovely, intimate affair between the people that we loved.

  Once Jenn got out of the way, Dad offered me his arm. I could hear the music starting up, and you couldn’t have wiped away my smile for the world. “Are you sure this is what you want?” Dad asked again.

  He didn’t ask me often. But every so often, like he had to make sure, and check up. The way he said it now, though, made it sound like this was the last time he would be asking. That whatever answer I gave him now, he would trust. I appreciated that more than I could say.