“She didn’t speak to me for the whole next day.” He chuckles.
“That’s the thing about teenagers,” I remind him. “They get over it. Eventually.” I poke him in the side. “And they’re still kissing. She told me this afternoon.”
“I wonder…do they still make chastity belts?” he asks.
“Yeah, they’re called fathers.”
I immediately realize my mistake. Jake’s not her father. Silence falls upon us like a wet woolen blanket.
“I didn’t mean—”
But Jake squeezes me tight. “I know what you meant. I kind of…wanted to talk to you about that anyway.”
I sit up and cross my legs, and Jake sits up too. He takes my hands in his. “I won’t be angry if you don’t want this…” He winces. “But the kids… I’d like to be their dad.”
“You’ll officially be their stepdad as of tomorrow,” I remind him.
“No,” he says. He growls low under his breath. “I want them to legally be mine. I’d like to adopt them. All of them. They could take my last name, if they wanted to, but they don’t have to. What do you think?”
His eyes are shimmery and shiny in the darkness, and I know he has given this a lot of thought. “Are you sure, Jake? You don’t have to take that step—”
“I want to take that step. I love them. I want them to be ours.”
“They’re already ours.”
“I asked the kids,” he blurts out.
My breath stalls. “And?”
“And they said yes.”
My voice comes out as a squeak. “They did?”
He nods. “They did. If it’s okay with you.”
“It’s okay with me,” I whisper.
“Really?” His voice hitches.
“Yes, really. I trust you to take care of them, no matter what. If anything happens to me, they would be yours. I want you to have legal standing with regard to them. So if they agree, then my answer is yes.”
Jake leans forward and grabs me, kissing me softly and sweetly. Then he rolls me beneath him. He toys with the neckline of my white nightgown. “Is this new?”
“Yes. Aunt Carole gave it to me.”
“It’s really lovely,” he says, staring into my eyes. “Do you think we could take it off?”
“Right now?”
He kisses me. “Yes. Right now,” he murmurs against my lips.
He reaches down with his right hand and rucks up the hem of the nightgown. Then he helps me sit up and he lifts it over my head. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he breathes. He reaches behind me and unhooks the nursing bra I usually sleep in, and pulls it down my arms. He cups one breast in his hand, massaging gently.
Over the past few weeks, Jake and I have gotten to know one another’s bodies. He knows what turns me on, and I know how to get him hard. I reach down between us and find him hard and waiting. I shove his lounge pants down over his hips, using my feet to push them all the way off, and grab his ass to pull him against me.
Jake groans and buries his face in my shoulder. “You’ll never believe what I did,” he says.
I grab his hair and lift his face up to look into mine. “What did you do?”
“I forgot condoms,” he says sheepishly and pokes out his bottom lip.
I laugh and wrap my legs around him. “Do you ever think you might want a kid of your own, Jake?”
“I have kids of my own,” he says. “Don’t I?” He rocks against my heat.
“I wouldn’t mind one more,” I say, and he slips inside me.
“Are you sure?” he asks, waiting just barely inside.
“Yes.”
He pushes hard inside me, going as deep as he can.
“God, you feel good,” he says, pulling back and then pushing into me again. He makes short, shallow strokes, and I can already feel the warmth building inside me. Suddenly, he pulls out and slides down, spreading my thighs wide with his palms as he licks up my slit.
“Jake,” I say. “Come back up here.”
He murmurs against my lower lips. “You feel too good. It’s different without a condom. I can’t last.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I assure him.
“It matters,” he mumbles, and then he spreads me open wide with his thumbs and latches on to my clit. He sucks me tenderly, but with strength, licking until my legs tremble around his ears. I rock my hips, and then I shatter into a million pieces. Jake suckles and licks as I come apart, my body shaking and shuddering, and just when I think I can’t take any more, he slows down, letting me come back to earth, putting the pieces of me back together.
Then he flips me over. His body covers mine, his palms covering the backs of my hands, his fingers lacing between mine. He kisses the side of my neck, and sinks inside me with one frantic push, letting out a groan right next to my ear. “God, I love you, Katie,” he says, and he pushes and retreats.
“More, Jake,” I plead. Jake moves my legs apart and settles between them, and I tilt my bottom up just right so he can go deeper. “Just like that,” I whisper.
“Come for me again,” he says. “Please.”
“I’m close. So close.”