32
DECLAN
Icouldn’t help myself. Laughter burst from me as her face flamed with embarrassment. I wasn’t laughing at her because she was embarrassed. No. It was the look on her face when Hayden commented on her pussy and tits. It was like she couldn’t fucking believe he mentioned those parts outside of sex.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed by either Hayden or me that she had some body image issues. Which were fucking ridiculous, but then Priest mentioned something to Hayden, who mentioned it to me, and we vowed to right her negative self-image. Hayden wanted to make it a rule she couldn’t talk badly about herself, but I felt that we could help her realize how beautiful she was without pointing out how negatively she thought of herself.
Not that I thought she didn’t realize it. I’m assuming she did, otherwise she wouldn’t make the comments, but in my mind, making a rule that said, ‘Marcie can’t think or say bad things about herself’ would be like pointing a spotlight at those things and turning it on supernova.
So, Hayden and I decided, okay, I decided that we’d do it in a way where we just complimented the fuck out of her. Although, in making that plan, I fucking forgot my husband was a horndog with no fucking filter.
Once she got the phone in her hands, she flipped off the camera. I’m assuming she thought she hung up because she rambled. We couldn’t hear everything she said, or maybe we did since she didn’t enunciate all the words. Or she may have left the phone on the bed while she paced, the words fading as she moved further away, then becoming louder as she returned. I noticed she tended to do that when working through a problem.
I finally intervened, after muting the call long enough to tell Hayden to keep his trap fucking shut, when she said she wasn’t good enough for us.
“Sweetness, please turn the camera back on.”
“Oh my God! How are you still there? I hung up on you!”
“Butcha didn’t. Now, listen to Daddy and turn the camera on.”
“I don’t wanna.”
“I know, but I want you to.”
I waited to see what she would do, but after a few tense moments, she complied.
When the camera flipped back on, my guts twisted. Tears glistened in her eyes and sat on her cheeks, and she’d dressed in the baggiest, frumpiest-looking sweatshirt imaginable.
“Colibrí, are you wearing clothes in the bedroom?”
“Hayden. No.”
“Yes. That’s the rule unless she uses her safe words.”
“Yellow.”
I fumed. He pushed too fucking hard sometimes.
“Good girl, colibrí. Now, tell Daddy and me why you’re so upset.”
She shook her head, her eyes squeezed closed, tears leaking out to roll down her beautiful face.
“Marcie, baby, you’re killing me. You are fucking gorgeous.”
Teeth gnashed her bottom lip, and she glanced up at me through dark, wet, spikey lashes.
“He’s right, colibrí. Declan and now, you. You two are the only people who have attracted my attention in three fucking years.”
“But I’m…”
“Perfection. Utter perfection and if anyone’s said different, point Papi and I to them along with the assholes who made you believe safe wording makes you a disappointment. Both of those things couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“What Declan said. You are perfect, your body, what we’ve seen of that gorgeous personality, the little you’ve shown us, and the brat that helped me tease Declan earlier, how you respond to us, the noises you make, how you make me feel even if we’re not together and I’m just thinking about you. I knew I wanted you to be ours the moment I saw you. Not I wanted you sexually, although I did, do, but more that, I wanted you in my life, and it confused the fuck out of me.”
I looked at him curiously, “Why?”
“Because of you, Declan. I meant it when I said there’s only been two people I’ve felt attracted to in the last three years—you and, when I saw Marcie, her. And just like with you, it wasn’t just sexual. Something about her called to me the way you did that first night and has every night since. Even all the nights I was too fucking much of a coward to fix the shit I broke.”
