I as lay on Callie trying to catch my breath and shift whatever was under my knee over I knew that I was well and truly fucked. That need to claim, to tie her to me with a baby, was insane but it was mine. I forced myself to sit up and bring her back onto my lap, messy cock still half hard and caught between our stomachs.I held her tight with my mouth pressed to her neck. “I don’t actually think you’re a whore, baby. Just so we’re clear.”
She let out a breath I hadn’t realized she was holding. “I can’t believe I said that.”
“I’ve never said half the shit I just said so I get it. I’ve never been that dominant during sex. You’re ruining me, Cupcake.”
“I can’t believe you said half of that, either. We’re both perverts.” She giggled as she said it and I felt a band around my chest loosen. She was okay. I hadn’t pushed her too far. “I’m going to have to have the car cleaned before I let Oliver back in it.”
“I’ll have it cleaned. And I’ll make sure they leave a trashcan on that front seat. And maybe fog for spiders.” I felt her teeth nip my jaw and groaned. “Give me ten minutes and do that again and I’ll fuck you through the floorboard of this car.”
Sitting up, Callie stared at me with bright eyes full of warmth and happiness that I wasn’t so sure I deserved. “I think about the spanking all the time. It’s somehow both the thing that distracts me and keeps me focused. I’ve never had sex like this before. I mean, the lake was intense but I hadn’t had sex in a long time before that night. Sex with my ex was thirty seconds and a beer burp. Now I’m having sex with multiple men and asking them to call me a whore. I think my horizons might’ve been opened a little too far.”
“Multiple men.” I searched her face for what- I didn’t know.
“You, Cole, and Ben. You keep offering yourself up as test drives…” She cupped my jaw and raked her teeth over her bottom lip. “I… I thought you guys talked about this or something. I thought you all knew about everything because you were together that first time. Did I read that wrong? I’m so sorry, Luke, I didn’t-”
I captured her mouth in a soft kiss and smiled into it, despite myself. “Relax, baby. Cole, Ben, and I share everything witheach other. Even you, apparently. I just thought maybe there was another dad. For some reason that felt worse than knowing every detail of what Cole and Ben have done to you. With you.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing, Luke.” She curled into my chest and rested her ear over my heart. “I’m out of my depth.”
“Are you happy?”
“It’s not that simple-”
“Are you happy, Callie?”
She hesitated and took a deep breath in and blew it out before replying. “Yeah, I think I am.”
I cupped the back of her head and smiled. “Alright then.”
38
Ben
Callie Morgan was doing a headcount and it felt like torture to watch her. She stood at the front of the bus with a clipboard she wasn't looking at, counting kids by tapping each one on the head like she was blessing them, and every few seconds she lost her place and started over. A little girl asked her a question and she crouched right down to the sticky bus floor to answer it, knees in who-knew-what, giving the kid her whole face like the answer to whether goats had top teeth was the most important thing she'd hear all year. Callie promised to find out, and the kid beamed like she'd been handed the moon.
I'd seen women perform that kind of warmth before, dial it up when the right person was watching and let it drop when they weren't. Callie did it when she thought nobody was looking at all. That was the thing that kept catching me in the ribs.
"Mr. Ben." Oliver had turned around in his seat one row up to face me, in a buttoned-up collared shirt that belonged on a man closing a mortgage. "Did you know goats have rectangularpupils? It gives them a near three-hundred-and-forty-degree field of vision. They can see you sneaking up on them. You can't sneak up on a goat."
"Good to know," I laughed. "I'll cancel any and all plans to sneak up on a goat."
He studied me to see if I was making fun of him. I wasn't, and he seemed to decide that, and faced front again, cracking open a book the size of a cinder block.
The geometry of the bus situation was actively hostile. I'm not a small man, and neither are Cole or Luke, and the bus was designed for second-graders. The three of us had been banished to the back bench, knees in our chests, while twenty-two kids screamed about goats up front and Callie tried to ride herd on all of it with a granola bar hanging out of her mouth. The bus had no air to speak of, and the heat had her blouse clinging in a way that made it real clear she'd dressed for a classroom and not a sweatbox on wheels. I could see the exact shape of her breasts through the thin cotton, the way the fabric gave up and went see-through over the curve of her nipples, and I shifted in my seat and threw my forearm across my lap before my dick could fully commit to ruining a field trip to some wacky holistic goat farm.
"This is a hate crime," Cole said. His knees were somewhere around his ears.
"You didn’t have to volunteer," Luke said.
"We all volunteered." I leaned my head against the window and watched Callie laugh at something a parent chaperone said, that real nose-crinkle one she did that lit my stomach up with fireflies. "For the children.Obviously."
That should have been the end of it, but Luke had gone quiet in the particular way he did when he was about to organize something he had no business organizing, and a couple miles down the road he leaned in, his eyes flicking to Oliver one row up.
"I have to tell you guys something." He dropped his voice. "About, you know…. thecupcake."
Cole's head turned slow. "What aboutmy cupcake." He didn't even seem to notice he'd said my. I noticed, and I was suddenly feeling very possessive over my favorite baked good.
"The other night. After paintball." Luke kept his eyes on the seatback. "I had a big delicious bite of the cupcake."
