“You’re an asshole,” I hiss, crossing my arms sullenly across my chest as the car’s tires screech as we pull away from the curb and onto the street.
Neither of us speaks on the way home, Knight’s gaze firmly on the road ahead, while I stare out of the window, silent tears tracking down my cheeks.
When the garage door closes behind us, I reach for my seat belt, but Knight’s hand covers mine, stopping me. “I’ll do it.”
“I don’t need you to do it.” I pout.
Getting out of the car, he prowls to my side and opens the door, unfastening me and lifting me out of the car. Walking us into the house without bothering to close the car doors, he ignores the couch and carries me straight upstairs, through the bedroom, and into the bathroom. Placing me down on the counter, he turns on the faucet to fill the tub, then strides back to me, his eyes blazing and wild.
I want to get off the counter and walk away, but I don’t, because I need him, and even though I’ve spent the morning trying to leave him behind, I miss him. I miss us, and I know it’s only been a few hours, but I feel like I’m falling apart without him and us and this weird, insular life we’ve created.
Staying silent, he undresses himself, then lifts me from the counter and undresses me, rewinding the time to how our mornings usually progress. When he picks me up again, I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and cling to him as he steps into the tub and sinks into the water with me wrapped around him.
As the warm water cocoons us, I try to decide what to say, but I can’t find anything that won’t end up with me shouting or crying, so instead I flatten myself against his body and absorb his body heat, feeling settled and calm for the first time since I woke up.
“Up at 0500. Breakfast at 0700. Bath, stimulation, and get ready for work. Lunch and stimulation at 1300 hours. Stimulation and dinner at 1900 hours, then home and bed,” he says slowly, spelling out our days, like he’s reading from a schedule, and he is. This is our schedule. It’s the timetable that our life runs around, and apparently, what we both need to feel settled and secure.
“Yes,” I agree.
“Yes.”
Shuffling up his body, I reach down and guide his cock to my entrance, sinking down onto him until I’m full. Then I close my eyes and finally relax.
TWENTY-ONE
KNIGHT
My dick is screaming for release, but I ignore the sensation, readjusting my hold on my wife as she sleeps on my chest. This morning has been one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. Leaving her to sleep while I went downstairs to work out was physical agony, my heart screaming to go back to her the moment I stepped out of our room without her.
Not seeing her eyes open or feeling her perfect body wrapped around me was painful. Cooking and eating alone reminded me of how barren my childhood was, and seeing the hurt in her eyes when she realized what I’d done made me want to claw at my own skin just to make the pain go away.
She locked the bathroom door and hid herself away from me. She cried so many tears today that the memory of the sound of her sobbing in the bakery feels like I’m being stabbed in the gut. But hearing her tell Etta that she doesn’t matter to me broke my heart into a million pieces.
Before her, I never really cared how I impacted other people. I’ve always been happy alone, so considering someone else has honestly never really occurred to me. I hold affection for mybrothers and Tori. I want them to be healthy and a part of my life, but I’ve never assumed that anything I did could affect that.
My doll is the reason I’m happy. She’s the reason I get up, the reason I continue to breathe, the reason I understand and feel love. She’s made me a husband, and on our first day as a family of three, I let her down. I hurt her. I made her feel like she wasn’t the place where my heart starts and stops.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. I hope I don’t, because then I’ll spend my existence making sure she never feels it again.
I wish I knew the words to fix this, but I don’t. I’ve done everything that I know how to do. I went to her and pledged myself to her. I’ve cared for her, married her, built her a house, and put a baby in her body.
I don’t know how to do or be more, but she needs me to be. I thought that putting her needs above my own would show her that she was my priority, and that I would rather make myself uncomfortable than her, but that’s not what happened. Somehow, I hurt her so badly that she didn’t want my touch, didn’t want my presence, didn’t want me. And I don’t know what to do to make things right.
All I can think of is keeping her close, but I don’t know if she even wants that now. Did I destroy the only thing I’ve ever truly needed?
Questions and unknowns circle through my mind as the water cools around us. I don’t want to get out of the tub, but I can’t stay in the water if it’s cold, if she could get cold. Carefully lifting her off my dick, I push up to my feet and climb out, wrapping her sleepy body in a towel before I carry her into the bedroom and place her under the comforter.
“No,” she whines, reaching for me as I hurriedly blot the water from my skin and climb in beside her. It’s barely 1400hours, but she’s tired, and if she wants to sleep, then I need to be with her.
Her brow furrows as her eyes start to blink open less than an hour later. Before she’s fully awake, she sits upright, her eyes wild until they land on me.
“I fell asleep?” she questions, slowly lowering herself to the mattress on her side, facing me.
“Yes.”
“I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
“Then sleep.”
