Hold On

I felt his presence leave and the truth of it was, it was late, I was tired (I didn’t get a lot of sleep on any kind of normal basis), life had been a roller coaster lately but we’d had a good night, the three of us, and right then, I was out of it.

So out of it, I didn’t have it in me to dig through my drawers and accomplish the colossal feat of finding sleepwear sexy enough for the first time I wore it around Merry (both our times sleeping together, we’d done it naked) at the same time being appropriate for me to sleep in with Merry and with my kid in the house.

Since I likely didn’t even own such a miraculous piece of clothing, I dragged out some drawstring pajama shorts, a tank, tugged off my clothes, and yanked them on.

I struggled out to the bathroom as Ethan was hitting his room.

“’Night again, Mom,” he bid me.

“Sleep good, kid,” I returned.

“You too,” he said then, “’Night, Merry. Can’t wait for waffles.”

“Me either, bud. Sleep tight.”

I glanced at Merry briefly, went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door.

I listed around doing my business, put zero effort in brushing my teeth (but I still managed to drag the toothbrush around), rinsed, spit, decided my makeup could stay on, and left the bathroom.

I hit my bedroom to see Merry getting up from the bed, shirt off, socks off, belt undone, and this made me partially rally.

The problem with that was he just grinned at me and walked out of the room, so his chest and the hair on his stomach with the arrow pointing to good things walked out of the room with him.

So I lurched to the bed, threw back my Janis Joplin covers, and did a face-plant in it.

I was snoozing when I felt the bed move, the dim of the lights on my eyelids disappearing completely because Merry turned out the light. Then he fitted the line of his lean, warm, hard body into mine, spooning me.

“Thanks for pizza,” I muttered sleepily into the dark.

He hauled me close with his arm around my belly.

“Shut up, brown eyes, and stop thankin’ me for everything.”

I ignored him.

“Thanks for gettin’ in Trent’s face and bein’ all cool even though you wanted to whale on him.”

His body started shaking.

I kept mumbling.

“Thanks for bein’ nice to my kid.”

“He’s easy to be nice to.”

I knew that, so I ignored that too.

“Thanks for givin’ up an awesome blowjob à la me to watch Fast & Furious 6 with my boy.”

“Just sayin’, that’s a debt you hold, baby, and I’ll be findin’ a time to collect.”

I looked forward to that.

It seemed I had enough strength in me to use my mouth to speak. But not to suck him off, no way, especially with my kid in the house, which was a shame (the not-being-able-to-suck-Merry-off part; my kid being in the house was never a shame).

“Thanks for waiting for me to get my head outta my ass so I could take a shot on this, because so far, it’s workin’ great.”

His arm at my belly got tighter and I felt his breath stir my hair when he tipped his head to me, but he said nothing.

“Merry?” I called.

“Right here, Cherie,” he said softly.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

He kissed the top of my hair and whispered back, “Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

“Just sayin’,” he continued quietly. “You get it. You live with Ethan. You got that in your life. You get that goodness. You don’t get it about you, but I’ll get you there. But at least with half of it you know, the pleasure is all mine.”

God.

Merry.

I snuggled back into him, closing my eyes tight.

He shoved his other arm under me and wrapped it around my upper chest.

“’Night, brown eyes,” he murmured.

“’Night, baby,” I murmured back.

Merry held me close, his body spooning mine.

And I fell fast asleep.





Chapter Thirteen


Never Dared to Dream

Cher



My eyes opened and I saw my bed stretching out in front of me, the pillows next to mine dented with sleep.

They’d been dented by Merry.

That made me realize I felt warm and it wasn’t the bedclothes that was doing it.