The Fight for Us (20 page)

Instead of letting that crazy take hold, he busied himself packing one box after another, biding his time until he could see her and knowing it would solve all his problems—at least until he was forced to be apart from her again. He packed half his bedroom alone in a matter of two hours and before the girls were even up. He lifted the picture of he and Delia off his nightstand, and he studied it for a moment. He’d always loved the picture of them, but as he looked at it, his stomach knotted painfully. He glanced away over and over again as he escaped the gaze of her eyes staring back at him. He eventually laid the frame in a box with his other personal items and closed it up.

But now it was noon, and his wait for Joss was over. Consequently, his wait to unburden the guilt from his conscience was too, and as she walked through his door carrying a pizza box, he sighed and let the tension melt away. He took the box from her, leaning down to kiss her quickly before he led the way to the kitchen. Once he hollered at Nat and Harper to come to lunch, he deposited the pizza box on the kitchen table and pulled her into his arms. He didn’t let her go until he heard the girls traipsing down the stairs, and before long, they were sitting around the table, chatting with the two of them.

“How’s the packing coming along, Nat?” Joss’s question interrupted Nat’s rather large bite of pizza, and she smiled with full cheeks, chewing and swallowing before she could answer.

“Good. Takes forever, but Harper’s a big help.”

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yeah, babe.”

“Are you and Mr. Henry dating?” The twinkle in Harper’s eye said she knew bringing this topic front and center would have consequences.

Isaiah had come to understand that Harper was very much like her mother in regards to her willingness to say just about anything that entered her mind. He had also figured out that
unlike
her mother, she used her ability to raise eyebrows to amuse herself. Joss usually regretted the results of shocking people, but Harper had a mischievous nature to her.

As Joss started choking on pizza, Isaiah opted to step in. “And if we were? Would you both be okay with that?”

Joss watched him closely as her throat remembered how to function, but while he could see her attention in his periphery, it was Nat he was focusing on. He’d intended to have this conversation in private with her, but given there was no shelving the topic thanks to the mischievous Harper, he decided this would have to do.

“Duh, Dad.” Nat shrugged. “We already know you like each other.” Her expression was saying ‘no duh’ just as much as her words were. She truly wasn’t bothered by it in any way—not nearly so much as he was trying to wrap his head around it.

He finally turned to Harper. “Well, there you have it. Yes, as far as I’m concerned—though Joss might disagree.”

Joss shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, dissenting to disagree with anything he was saying.

“But since I am seeing your mother, do you think you could at least call me Isaiah, rather than Mr. Henry?”

Harper smiled, looking very proud of herself for forcing them to acknowledge what they’d been denying for some time now. The discussion disintegrated rapidly after that as the girls somehow managed to move the conversation from Joss and Isaiah dating, to them marrying, to them adopting a child due his neuteredness, to said child being foreign, to Harper and Nat naming the child. He let their happy little imaginations go for a good ten minutes, but once he’d heard the conversation circle back around to Joss and Isaiah and whether they were “doing it” or not, he decided that was enough.

“How did this happen?” He interrupted the girls as he spoke to Joss.

Joss’s eyes were wide, and she looked as stupefied as he felt. “I really don’t know. I don’t want to adopt a child though.”

“Well, thank God. I don’t either.” And then, looking back and forth between the girls, he continued. “You do realize we’re dating, not marrying and adopting foreign babies?”

The girls shrugged their shoulders in unison, and Isaiah finally stood.

“I’m going upstairs to pack in my room. Joss is going to help me, largely because I have no idea what nonsense you’ll put in her head if I leave her alone with you two. Nat, how is your room coming along?”

“Good. Almost done with the last of what I can do. Can we watch a movie when we finish?”

“Sure.”

Joss stood and the girls followed them upstairs, veering off into Nat’s room as Isaiah led Joss to the end of the hall and his bedroom. She looked around as she entered, studying the baby pictures of Nat he had on his dresser and that he’d yet to pack. He was suddenly infinitely glad he’d packed away the picture of him and Delia—and yet, he was also hit with a harsh pang of guilt at the same time. There was nothing wrong with having a picture or two of his dead wife around less than two years after her death, but at the same time, it
did
feel wrong. The fact that those pictures were tucked away in a box that was already packed at the foot of his bed brought that conflicted, confused guilt front and center in his mind again.

He watched her studying his personal space, and as her fingers ran over the footboard of his bed, his body warmed. He instantly wanted to shut the door and do all sorts of things to her that he’d been imagining for some time now, but the giggling coming from down the hall made that all but impossible at the moment. She finally sat on the edge of his bed, and that alone made him hard and ready for her. He chuckled and turned away.

“I like your style.” She said.

“I like yours too.” He responded over his shoulder as he grabbed a handful of books off his over-full bookshelf. But after he set the stack in the box on the floor, he turned back to her. “Are you okay?”

She cocked her head questioningly but said nothing.

“I’m not usually so…” He searched for the right word that wouldn’t sound too pathetic or lame. “Rough. Fast. Kind of juvenile.”

She smiled and stood walking to stand beside him at the bookshelf. She grabbed a stack of books, handing them to him so he could put them in the box on the other side of him. “I’m perfectly sore, and you were perfectly juvenile, rough, and fast—at least for the occasion.”

“Hmm…” He said nothing else, and he let her continue to help him empty his shelves. He had two large bookshelves in his room, and it took nearly an hour for them to empty both before they moved on to the wall art, but the moment they’d begun, Natalie and Harper popped in.

“My room’s done. We’re going to make popcorn and watch a movie.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” He listened to the stairs creak as the girls ran down, and soon, the smell of popcorn filled the house. Once the T.V. started blaring, he shut the box he was working on and quickly closed and locked the door. Joss missed it all as she was bending over another partially full box. He wrapped his arm around her from behind her body, slipping his hand under the bottom hem of her shirt as she stood from the box. He flattened his palm, spreading his fingers across her stomach. Her jeans were tattered, loose old things that she’d rolled at the ankle, and she was stocking footed, having left her snow boots at the front door. The waist of her jeans was plenty loose to let his fingers brush under the worn material. When she turned toward him, his hand traveled around to her back, his ring finger and pinky still under the waist of her jeans, feeling the very top of the cleft of her bottom.

“We shouldn’t do this right now.”

He ignored her when he leaned down to her lips and slipped his tongue between them, and she ignored her own comment when she ran her tongue along his. The quiet moan that vibrated from her mouth into his said she had no real intention of stopping him. When Isaiah pulled her toward the bed, he didn’t even stop kissing her. It wasn’t until he was sitting on the edge that he let go of her lips. She looked down at him as he parted his legs and pulled her between them.

He slowly worked his hand up under her shirt again. It was loose and billowy, and it had buttons he’d far rather be undoing, but never quite knowing how much privacy he might have for how long, he opted to keep her clothes on.

“What are we doing?”

“Little game of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

She chuckled. “I see. So, you’re going to let me see your nipples?”

He clicked his tongue sarcastically as he nodded. “Not sure I’m ready to show you my nipples, but it
does
only seem fair.”

She cocked her head in chastisement at him.

“Fine. What would you like to see in exchange?” He conceded.

She studied him for a moment before finally sighing in exasperation. “Your chest will do fine. Anything more and I’m bound to forget we have children downstairs.”

He pulled his hand from her stomach, stripping his shirt off over his head and tossing it on the bed beside him. She took her time, letting her attention travel from his face to his pecs and then down to his abdomen before finally returning to his eyes.

“Now, may I please continue?” He pleaded, and she nodded.

His fingers returned to her stomach, and her stomach muscles started to twitch under his palm as he slowly pushed under her shirt up toward her chest. But when his hand had reached the flat hard surface of her sternum and found nothing there, he looked at her and smirked.

“I was too lazy to put a bra on today. I wasn’t exactly expecting this.” She rolled her eyes at herself as he peered up at her.

It was nearly impossible not to simply yank her shirt up, so he could see her, but he forced himself to remain calm and deliberate, leaning forward instead and letting his lips touch the spot of skin just below her belly button that was barely visible. He sucked a gentle kiss on her pale skin, and she inhaled sharply. Her breasts were still hidden under the fabric, but as he continued to inch his hand up, more and more of her stomach was exposed.

She was trembling as his lips met the skin right above her belly button this time, and when he flicked the skin between his lips with his tongue, she cried out quietly. He worked his mouth upward, kissing a trail over the same path his hand had made moments before, and by the time his mouth had reached the bottom of her sternum, she was panting, and he knew if he stopped kissing he would be too.

He sat back glancing up to her as he did, and as he licked his lips, his hand moved slowly to the side, feeling the swell of her breast as he passed over it and then the hard nub of her nipple. Once she was in his palm, he squeezed. He groped as he studied her face, and her lips parted as she gasped. He reached to the other side, snaking that hand up under her shirt as well, and then he finally lifted the fabric, bunching it up above her breasts, so he could see her. Every nerve in his body started tingling, and he stared. Her tits weren’t small or large, just perfectly round and perky. Her nipples were small and pink against that creamy pale skin of hers, and they were hard as nails in her aroused state. Of course, his dick was hard as hell thanks to his own arousal.

His fingers trembled against her skin, and he studied the way her stomach muscles clenched when he brushed over her skin, but it was his own deep hum that had started in the pit of his stomach and ended in his mouth that shocked him the most. It was out of his control, and when she heard that hum turn into a groan, her fingers ran lightly over his parted lips and then up to his hair as she stroked through it gently.

“How far are we going to let this go?” Her brow was raised sarcastically.

She already knew he was willing to screw her brains out in a locked conference room, and she was likely quite curious if he’d do it in a locked bedroom with their children downstairs. Of course, the sound of the T.V. downstairs was an encouragement that he could get away with it, but even he wasn’t willing to chance this so early in their relationship.

“Just far enough to drive us both insane.”

“I’m already there.”

“So am I, but humor me for another minute. Straddle me.” He watched her, waiting to see if she’d comply, and when she lifted her leg over his, planting her knee at his hip, he hummed again. He let her shirt drop for a moment as he helped her get her other knee at his other hip, and soon, she was sitting astride his hips with her knees on either side of him. He closed his thighs, letting her settle her bottom on the tops of them. She leaned back, placing her palms on his knees.

He didn’t spend nearly as long getting her shirt back up above her tits, and once it was, he leaned to her, latching himself to her breast and sucking hard against her nipple as she started wriggling on his lap. When he sank his teeth into the plump, soft flesh that surrounded her nipple, the writhing became more pronounced.

She was pushing her hips against him. She wanted more, and fuck, he did too. He wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to drive them insane, and that’s exactly what he was doing. He released his hold on her breast, sitting up straighter so he could see her. Her eyes looked desperate, and her mouth twitched as her hips begged for more of him.

“Are you wet?” He watched her as he breathed out the question. He wanted her soaking, even if he wasn’t going to be giving himself the pleasure of touching or tasting that wetness at the moment. “Say it. Tell me.”

She was taking ragged panting breaths as he waited. When she responded, “Yes,” he could barely hear her. He clenched his buttocks, rocking his hips upward to hump into her hot pussy that was still completely clothed. He could feel her heat between her legs, and it was almost painful to push so hard against the inside of his jeans, but he clenched again, grinding himself between her legs as her eyes shot open even wider in a near panic of need. He let that motion go on and on as her eyes fluttered, and he held her shirt high, studying and staring.

She moved her hands from his knees to his shoulders, bringing her chest to his as she moved closer to him, and he could feel her pebble hard nipples brushing and rubbing against his chest. He focused on the sensation of where their skin met, tickling, innervating, and just plain taunting the hell out of one another.

“Fuck,” he muttered as his hips kept moving and hers pushed toward him to match his each thrust. “I need more time with you.” It was painful to slow the movements of their bodies, and as he did, he let his head fall back to stare at the ceiling. Her lips on his neck made it nearly impossible for him to keep his hips still. He eventually gave up fighting it for a while longer, and as he lifted her and rolled over to deposit her under him, he held her shirt up again. She was beautiful. The small round mounds of her breasts stood straight up from her body, her nipples jutting peaks against the soft skin, and he shuddered from his head down to his toes as his attention traveled over her body.