The word loops in my head fills every dream.
I’m not worthy of her. She deserves so much more.
Over the smells of her cooking, it is her scent that cuts through it all. I inhale through my nose, close my eyes for a moment and dwell on the soft lavender and honey she exudes on the outside. Over the years I’ve taken in the smell of her sex an infinite number of times, it’s not lost on me, and even now it’s here in the space between us. My cock pounds with need again and the fight to keep my promise to myself becomes nearly unbearable.
“Dinner’s ready.” She sashays over to the table, and I follow, taking a seat in my usual spot at the head. She places two steaming bowls of the soup she’s been slaving over since mid-morning, one in front of me and one on the next placemat, so close to mine that the rims of the bowls are almost touching.
Sliding in next to me, she takes her seat to my right where she’s sat for nearly every meal in the house since the day we came home. She folds her tiny hands in her lap. Waiting for me. She never takes the first bite. Always waiting for me to go first. Not something I taught her, yet one of a billion tiny things that have bound her to me in ways she could never understand.
“Here’s to four years.” I raise my glass, and she does the same, clinking them together, and I silently wish for the strength to keep my promise. I can’t bear to set her out into the world, I just can’t.
“And the best Daddy ever.”
Her words steal my breath, and cum leaks out of my cock as I growl at her and give her the look. She pokes her tongue out at me, and it only serves to make the sticky wet spot in my boxers bigger.
“I don’t know why you hate that name so much.” She takes a sip of water, and I imagine her lips ringing the base of my cock while I empty down her throat. “It suits you.”
The trusting look in her eyes tells me she still to this day has no idea the filthy things I long to do to her. The ways I would teach her love and lust and pain, and how it would feed me. The light and the dark. Serving us both in ways she doesn’t know.
“I don’t hate it, Lamb.” It’s all I can get out before my throat clutches around what I want to say. But you have no idea what it actually means to me.
I lock my jaw muscle until I can breathe again, and we finish our meal with a bit of small talk about the events of the week and my upcoming appointments. We talk about her friend Michaela’s recent move to a new apartment and how excited she’s been about buying furniture and paint.
It’s hard to hold coherent thoughts in my head as we finish the soup and I help Brinna clean up. She doesn’t know how I watch her every move, listen intently to the way she hums the B-52’s Love Shack under her breath as we wash the dishes together. The way I try not to touch her fingers as she hands me the wet dishes to dry and I breathe as deeply as I can to draw in as much of her as humanly possible without a touch.
I notice everything. Today, she’s changed her nail color from yellow to some sparkly pink that looks like a unicorn licked each nail.
“I’ll make a fire.” I shift from the sink as soon as we are done, needing some space. My need to touch her feels like a living thing inside me desperate to claw its way to the surface.
As I turn, a twinge from my old wounds shoots up my leg, and I battle to keep from letting the pain show on my face. Instead, I reach out and steady myself against the worktop, hoping it looks like I’ve casually turned to face her and not like I’m an invalid in her care.
If she’s noticed anything odd, she doesn’t give it away.
“Sounds good. It’s cool tonight.” As she turns to set the last dish on the towel next to the sink I can’t help noticing the way her nipples press out on the thin white fabric of my T-shirt. Yes, my T-shirt.
I quit fighting her about wearing my clothes long ago. It was a hill I wasn’t willing to die on and, in my heart, knowing at least a part of me was touching her body...it somehow brought me comfort.
I bring a hand to my forehead and squeeze my temples to settle the pain, then make my way over to the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace in the open room where the kitchen and living room flow together. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and the chill is starting to settle in the big open space. Her soup took hours longer than she expected to get just right
, but I secretly enjoyed the hunger the late meal created in me.
When she finally skips into the room, I ask, “So, poker or Alice in Wonderland?”
“I think Alice. Your pride took a hit the other night, I’ll give you a break. Besides, how am I ever going to eat the ten thousand Pixy Stix I already have?” She grins and crinkles her nose, sending more blood rushing to my hard-on.
The next couple hours she sits across from me on the sofa, legs curled under her while she reads Through the Looking Glass to me. Her reading to me is another of our traditions and listening to her voice I’m taken to places I am ashamed of and yet find far too familiar.
Occasionally, when she pauses to take a breath or turn the page, I ask her a question just to hear her own thoughts and opinions. I ask what color I should have the kitchen painted and what she would do about the economy if she was in charge. I ask about her friend, and what she thinks of her decisions.
I don’t care what the question is, it’s just that I want to access her mind, to see inside her head, instead of just hearing her voice uttering someone else’s words.
There are some subjects we never touch on. I never bring up her medical condition, the one that means she’ll never carry a child. After her period cramps left her curled in her bed for days in the months after I arrived, I insisted we have her completely checked out. Some tests and an ultrasound determined that her cramps were not necessarily due to any major underlying condition, just bad luck. It also revealed a structural defect in her uterus which would prevent her from becoming pregnant. She feels in some way it makes her less of a woman and has on many occasions when I’ve tried to reassure her she’s asked me to not bring it up, and I respect her request.
As for me, she knows not to ask about my time in the service. There was a hell of a lot of good, but that one moment of bad overshadows it all. I also steer any of her questions away from anything that would pointedly reveal my own diminished cognitive skills over the years. My head was fucked due to the bomb blast. My reading level reverted to grade school, and my math skills evaporated completely. Like I was trying to read fucking Sanskrit or something.
I’ve been working on my issues, but it still makes me wonder if she would think less of me if she knew.
I do my best to smooth over questions that may give me away. Feeling like less of a man because of my loss of some abilities is not something I care to reveal to her. It’s my job to take care of us, not her job to soothe my ego.