Part I
DOMINIC
CHAPTER ONE
Present day ...
When you had five children, sleep was very hard to come by. And sleeping in on the weekends was practically unheard of. I was a trier, if anything, so ever since I became a father fifteen years ago, I attempted, every single weekend, to catch a few extra minutes whenever I could. My know-no-boundaries offspring made it their personal mission to make sure I didn’t.
“Daddy?”
I refused to lift my eyelids as I grumbled, “Go away.”
“Come on, Daddy. Get up.”
I snored. Loudly.
“Daaaaaaddy?”
I groaned but kept my eyes shut, hoping the kid harassing me would give up and leave.
“I know you’re fakin’ it.”
“Go bother your mom,” I half pleaded, snuggling into my pillow. “Please.”
I felt tiny, soft hands touch my bare back, and that was when the let’s-pretend-dad-is-a-drum game started.
“I don’t wanna play with a girl. I wanna play with you. You’re stronger than Mammy.”
I chuckled gruffly before I rolled onto my back, halting the drum game my son had started. I reached up and rubbed my eyes before I opened them and stared at the ceiling of my bedroom. A ceiling that had multiple stickers of stars and moons stuck to it from when Georgie was a baby. I turned my head to the left and came face to face with my actual baby. I reached over, gripped under Axel’s armpits, and heaved him onto the bed, making him squeal with laughter. He was the youngest of our five, our last child. My baby. He was spoiled rotten because of this.
“Your mom is plenty strong. Why don’t you want to play with her?”
“I’m not talkin’ to ‘er anymore.”
He said this as he sat directly on my chest, making me grunt.
“Why not?”
Axel scowled. “She keeps callin’ me a baby.”
My lips twitched. “You don’t think you’re a baby?”
“I just turned seven,” Axel said, puffing his chest out with pride. “I’m not a baby, Daddy.”
I grinned at him. “Your mom doesn’t mean anything when she calls you baby, son. It’s just a habit from when your brothers and sister were little. She even calls me baby now and then ... Do you think I look like a baby?”
Axel considered this, then giggled. “You’re definitely not a baby.”
He spoke as he poked at my abdominal muscles. Muscles that at thirty-eight were still tight, toned, and very defined. My love for working out never faded as I got older and neither did my wife’s adoration for my body, so I made sure to keep it in peak physical condition because it made her moan on sight.
I loved hearing that woman moan.
I yawned. “Is Mom still in her pjs?”
“Yup.” Axel nodded. “She said she’s gettin’ a shower when ye’ wake up.”
“I better go downstairs and relieve her then. What do you say?”
Axel cocked an eyebrow. “Are ye’ goin’ to kiss ‘er again?”
“Do you not like when I kiss her?”
He shook his head. “She’s my mammy.”
“And she’s my wife,” I countered, grinning.
“I was in ‘er belly,” Axel deadpanned. “Beat that.”
Easy.
“I put you in her belly.”
He stared down at me. “How?”
I hesitated, wondering if he was too young for the talk that I had given to all my other kids at various ages, but Axel’s attention switched to flicking my nipples and laughing when I flinched. He crawled off me when I playfully swatted his hands away, then jumped off the bed and ran out of the room shouting, “I woke ‘im up, Ma!”
I shot into an upright position. “You said you wanted to play!”
“I lied,” Axel shouted as he reached the stairs. “Mammy said I’d get the biggest cookie ever after dinner tonight if I woke ye’ up. Sorry ... not really, though! Cooookkkiieeee.”
I kicked the blankets off my body, then turned and hung my legs over the bed. I snorted as I heard my wife praise our youngest at the bottom of the stairs for waking me up. I wasn’t surprised that she enlisted our kids’ help; she always had them scheming when she didn’t want to do something. She said it was one of the perks of having children.
“Beau!” Georgie suddenly bellowed. “Give it back or I swear to God I’ll—”
“Hey!” I shouted, getting to my feet and walking out to the hallway to see what was going on.
Georgie, my eldest, had Beau, my second eldest, in a chokehold with her arm hooked perfectly around his neck. She had her right leg wrapped around his left to angle his body so she could get a firm grip in a better stance. He couldn’t attempt to break her hold on him without hurting himself in the process, and she knew it. I had taught her how to protect herself and how to hold her own, but she wasn’t supposed to practice her self-defence moves on her brothers.
I stared at my firstborn son, and a flashback of his birth suddenly entered my mind.