Weighing in at 6 lbs. 9 oz.
Mama and Calli are so in love with each other and I am so in love with them.
CHAPTER 64
Olivia
ONE MONTH LATER
The steady rocking of the new, very comfortable chair Asher bought for the living room, along with the ice hitting the window and the little grunting sounds Calli makes as she suckles her breakfast from my breast are the sweetest melody. Duke is snoozing where he always does, right at my feet, and Dick is nuzzled under the crook of his paw. I lean over to give them both a little pat with my free hand. I may not get much sleep right now, but I am the most fulfilled and in love I’ve ever been.
“Here you go, mama.” Asher pokes his head from around the corner, wearing his navy uniform pants and standard LCFD T-shirt, ready to head to the firehall. He’s freshly showered and his damp black hair is pushed back off his face, still wet and slightly disheveled.
I’m not the only one currently getting no sleep. There isn’t a moment Calli wakes that he isn’t awake with me, keeping me company while I feed her. He’ll change her or sometimes just stare at her as he rocks her back to sleep, and I swear this child sleeps more on his chest than anywhere else.
Watching Asher become a dad has been the most tender and beautiful thing I’ve ever had the privilege to witness. But the best part of all was that he confessed to me the morning after Calli was born that he was going to start talking to someone about his past, to sort through all that hurt and to become the best man he can for me and Calli. After only three sessions with a therapist Cassie recommended, he already seems lighter.
Asher sets a steaming cup of coffee down beside me now, knowing while I’m feeding her is the perfect time to drink it so she doesn’t get any caffeine from me at her next feeding in a couple of hours. And God help me, without my beloved cup of coffee I wouldn’t survive the day. It’s a far cry from the two or three cups I drank before I was pregnant, but it’s just enough to make me feel human.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he bends down to kiss me, and I breathe in his delicious pine and mint scent. After a month I’m completely healed and I’m feeling almost desperate for him, though we still have to wait another few weeks until we can be together again. A few weeks I’m convinced will be torture because there is nothing sexier than the man you love stepping into his role as a dad.
Calli falls off my breast—she smells so sweet and her fluff of red hair is soft and fine—as I run the pads of my fingers over her head while she dreams. She’s totally milk drunk, and a trickle of it runs down her chin. I swipe it off and she sucks in her sleep. My little bear. There’s nothing in this world that could’ve prepared me for the love I felt the second she was placed into my arms.
“She done?” Asher asks, sitting across from me. I nod, knowing exactly what he wants.
He stands, looking like an eager puppy, and it never fails to make me smile as he bends down, his two large inked hands almost swallowing her whole as he scoops Calli up into his arms.
“How’s my little bear today?” he asks a sleeping Calli as he nestles her in the crook of his arm against his strong, solid chest. “You get a good breakfast? Is your belly all full? Lots of fuel for that smile to charm the world?” She only started smiling a week or so ago, and almost all of them are for him. “You have a full day today. Nana’s coming over and you have to getat leasttwo poops in …” He prattles on to her as I watch them, and my God it’s a beautiful sight.
It’s not the patience he has to hold her for hours on end, patting her little bum as he rocks her to sleep, or the sweet way he whispers to her, most of the time things I can’t hear, though I don’t need to. It’s not the sheer beauty of this big, rugged man reduced to a puddle before me for his daughter the moment she looks at him or smiles at him.
It’s the beauty of watching a man who never had this with his own father, who never knew love in any way, experience it all so easily with his own child and me. It’s witnessing him break the cycle, just like he said he would.
Epilogue
Asher
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
“Fucking Christ, Livi, you look so damn good right now. But you need to spread these thighs, we don’t have long.”
Olivia moans but she doesn’t hesitate as I tighten the rope around her wrists in the tack barn at Silver Pines. I look down at her, wrists tied, tethered to the thick hook on the wall of barn board in front of her. She’s bent over the empty workbench. Her perfect ass is on display and she’s about to be dripping down the insides of her thighs for me.
“Beg me,Daddy?” She looks at me over her shoulder while I start to stroke my cock at the sight of her: cheeks flushed, hair wild, and eyes hooded. I smack her ass for her sass, and her eyes flutter closed as she lets out another whimper.
“Aye,” I groan. “That’s more like it. Now let’s make this messy cunt cry for me. Show me how needy you are.”
She listens, spreading her legs wider. Only a thong stands between me and what I want because she’s already stripped right down for me. Like the good fucking girl she is.
Olivia knows I’m right, that we don’t have time. Her mother and Jo took Calli to the store for more paper plates, whichmeans we have maybe an hour tops alone. We snuck out to the barn because it seemed like the most private place on the property. Especially in the winter. Plus, the door locks from the inside.
As new parents, when you haveanytime alone, you fucking take it. In a barn, on the living room floor, in the laundry room.Any-fucking-where you can.
Sunlight streams through the small window of the barn, giving me the perfect view of her soaked pussy as I pull the thong aside.
Christ yes.Soaked, all for me. My last thread of control snaps as I swipe her long hair off her back. Tracing the curve of her spine, I let my fingers trail down to her hips, stroking the globes of her ass and admiring the handprint I left there. Fucking hell, I’m ready to blow my load all over her just from looking at her like this.
After almost two years with Olivia, I ask myself daily when, or if, I’ll ever get enough of her. I already know the answer is no. I drop my lips to her upper back, her shoulders, fisting her waves in my hand and tugging her head back.
