“I don’t, that doesn’t mean…” she said that fast, but didn’t finish.
“Chloe, baby, I hope you get I get off in a big way for you. We’re hot as fuck. I need you to be like you are too. I don’t care you assert yourself, that’s hot too. But I’m a control guy, and the fact you get off on that works for me. Huge.”
She seemed to relax.
But Judge didn’t like it that she’d been tense in the first place.
“It isn’t a weakness to enjoy giving up control,” he told her.
“I know, I just…”
Again, she didn’t finish.
“You just what?” he pushed, sliding his finger out and wrapping both hands around her waist to communicate she had his full attention, what she was sharing mattered to him and he wanted her to share it so he could fully understand it.
“I just don’t want it to become a burden.”
There it was.
When she gave him that, he wrapped both arms around her.
Then he rolled them so she was pinned, kept her in the curve of one arm, but came up on his other elbow.
Only then did he say, “Baby, stop dooming us. We’re not good, we’re great. In all,” he pressed his hips into hers to make a point, “the ways we can be.”
“Okay,” she said, but that word was almost timid.
He didn’t like that, it was not Chloe at all, so to get her out of it, he grinned at her. “If I have a physical day, and you want a ride, I got no problem lying back with you throwing a leg over and doing the work. But I think we both know, the norm is gonna be what it’s been, and I am way down with it.”
“You…the…” She looked to his forehead, took a second to get her shit together, then she gazed right into his eyes and declared, “The sex is fantastic, Judge. I love who I am when I’m in bed with you. But it’s so much more. It’s so much more. And that—”
“Trips you.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“You’re scared,” he noted.
“Judge—”
He dipped his face so his nose brushed hers.
“Chloe,” he growled, “again, stop dooming us. You’re right. We are. We are so much more. Live it. Be happy in it. Because so many people do not have this, but we do, right now, at dinner earlier with Gen and Duncan, this morning when we were brushing our teeth side by side in your bathroom, tomorrow morning when we do the same. Stop looking back and stop fretting about the future. Doing that builds nothing in the now. Which is where we are. It’s always where we are. It’s impossible to be anywhere else. And I, for one, fucking love being here.”
She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes, which meant Judge’s slid up into his throat.
She then touched his check, ran her thumb along his lower lip.
And then she said, “Okay, Judge.”
Time to move them past that and into a new now.
“You leaking?” he asked gently.
She nodded.
“You or me?” he inquired after who was going to take care of that.
“Me,” she answered. “I’ll be right back.”
That was when he nodded, dipped, kissed her deep and thorough, then broke it and rolled off.
She went to the bathroom to clean up.
He went to his pajama bottoms to put them on.
Zeke, who’d been hanging on the dog bed on the floor that Chloe bought him (which was a pink faux fur that looked like a sheepskin, but that hid it was orthopedic memory foam—a bed that Judge had decreed upon sight Zeke would reject, but he’d immediately been disproved because Zeke loved it), joined him in the human bed.
Chloe came back, grabbed panties and a nightie, put them on and climbed in with her two boys.
They each turned out their lights, met in the middle and snuggled with a dog on their toes.
“Mom likes you,” she said quietly into his throat.
“I’m likeable.”
“I like you too.”
Judge grinned into the dark. “Good, because I like you.”
“We’re so corny,” she sighed.
“Not sure corny likes her man’s finger up her ass right after he shot a load up her pussy. That’s more aptly described as hot…and tight.”
She pulled slightly away (slightly) and slapped his arm. “Judge! Don’t be vulgar.”
Judge kept grinning and declared, “I’m buying lube.”
“Oh my God,” she said, totally fake harassed because she said it settling back into him. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you’re gonna get your ass fucked.”
She shifted against him.
“Had that before?” he grunted, not wanting to know if that was a yes, but needing to if it was a no.
“No,” she whispered.
Fuck.
That would always only be his.
Instead of howling his elation, he stated, “You don’t like it, we’ll stop.”
“I like everything you do.”
Yeah, she did.
He pulled her closer and was grinning again.
“We’ve done it,” she declared.
“What?” he asked.