I hang back in the doorway as she goes to lift Polly out of the crib and into her arms, and for a moment, I just stand there and take her in.
When I got that text from her, asking to come over, I had been dead asleep—one of the few nights I got off from the hospital, and I wanted to catch up on as much rest as humanly possible. But the moment I saw her message, I jumped to my feet and rushed over, not even thinking twice. If there was something going on with her, then I had to be here to protect her—I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her or my daughter, and that was the end of it.
When I got here, of course, I found out that it likely hadn’t been anything too serious. She was apologetic, which is ridiculous, but that shouldn’t surprise me. She still doesn’t really understand how serious all of this is, how much danger she could be in if she takes her eye off the ball for too long, and I’m not going to be the one to force her to find out.
And now, as she cradles a wailing Polly, I can tell how tired she is. She looks exhausted, and not just in the way that most new mothers are, but something deeper. Something bone-deep, the worry of what she has brought into her life by getting involved with me. I hate seeing it, but at least I can go some way to assuaging that by being here with her.
“Hey there, honey, it’s alright,” she coos to her little girl, bouncing her up and down in her arms. “I’m right here. You’re all good. You can go back to sleep whenever you want…”
Polly’s cries slowly began to die down as Katie speaks to her, the sound of her mother’s voice utterly relaxing to her. At this age, babies hardly knew they aren’t still a part of their mother, and it’s clear Polly can see no real difference between the woman who holds her and the person she actually is.
Once she has settled, Katie glances over her shoulder at me. “You want to hold her?”
I hesitate for a moment, surprised. I haven’t actually held my daughter as of yet, something I’m all too aware of. But one of the reasons I’ve been trying to hold back on that is that I know I’m going to get too attached to her.
I don’t want to let myself get drawn into all of this, this feeling of being part of a family. It’s not what I need here, not what I can live with. I have a whole life that has nothing to do with this place, and it’s a life I’m not willing to abandon for anything. It’s a life I have trained for as long as I’ve been alive, and a life I won’t let slip through my fingers.
And yet, as she holds Polly out toward me, I find myself cradling her in my arms for the first time. And as she gazes up at me, taking me in for the first time, I feel a rush of emotion so intense it nearly takes me off my feet.
“You okay?” Katie asks, probably able to read the expression on my face right now.
I nod. “I’m fine,” I assure her, gently brushing a strand of Polly’s hair aside. “I’m fine.”
I just hold her for a moment, relishing this chance to be close to her. It’s unlike anything I have felt before, this connection with her—knowing that she is my own flesh and blood, and being able to see her for all the potential she holds in her own right too. A whole lifetime stretched out ahead of her, from this moment when she’s resting in my arms, and it’s hard to wrap my head around just how much that means.
After a few moments, she starts sniffling again, and Katie reaches out for her once more.
“She must be exhausted,” she murmurs as she brings her back to her crib. “You get some rest, baby. I’ll be back to check on you soon, okay?”
And with that, she slowly backs out of the room, setting up the baby monitor so she can keep an eye on Katie from the other room. She plants the screen on the table in the living room, and sits down on the couch again, rubbing her hand over her face.
I’m not sure what to do. Does she want me to go now? She seems like she has calmed down, and I can’t imagine she wants to keep me kicking around for any longer than I need to be.
“You can sit,” she tells me softly, glancing up at me.
“You sure? I can go—”
“I want you to stay.”
The words are simple, but they send a shock wave through my system. There’s something completely all-consuming about being here with her right now, as though everything that exists outside of this apartment has ceased to be. I take a seat next to her, and glance over to the baby monitor.
“She’s sleeping already,” I remark, and she smiles and nods.
“Yeah, she does sleep well,” she agrees. “I’m really lucky. I know a lot of babies have trouble at this age, but she usually goes down like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not just luck.”
She glances over at me, confused.
“You’re a great mom, Katie.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “I appreciate the sentiment,” she replies. “But I don’t know if it’s possible to be a great mom this early on in her life. Give me a few months and I can really accept that compliment, you know?”
I reach over and grip her knee tightly, gazing at her. I need her to hear this from me. I need her to know how serious I am. Because something tells me she doesn’t have a lot of people in her life who are willing to tell her what she needs to hear.
“No, I’m serious,” I murmur to her. “You are. I can see it in the way you look at her, the way you talk to her—you’re great at this already. I see plenty of mothers come in and out of the hospital, so I know when I’m looking at a natural.”
She smiles again, but this time, it’s a little more sincere. She looks a little more certain, as though she’s starting to trust the words coming out of my mouth.
“I’m not saying that I ever could have planned for any of this,” I tell her softly, reaching my hand up to rest on her cheek. “But if I’d had the choice—I would have chosen to have a baby with someone like you.”
She draws in a sharp breath at those words. For a second, I worry I’ve overstepped—worry that I have said something too intense, something too hard for her take.
But then she grins at me. “You really mean that?”
“I really mean that.”
“Well,” she breathes. “That’s…that’s a lovely thing to hear, that’s for sure.”
She falls silent for a moment, and as I study her face, curiosity gets the better of me. Despite the fact that we have a daughter together, I still hardly know anything about her, and I want to.
“What about your mom?” I remark, trying to keep my voice casual, not to make it too obvious that I’m delving for more information about her. “Are the two of you close?”
She nods—but then shakes her head.
“We were,” she replies, carefully. “When she was alive.”
“She passed? I’m sorry—”
“Both my parents did, a while ago,” she explains, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “I—it’s been a long time without them.”
I can hear the pain in her voice. No matter how long it might have been, it’s clear that the weight of it still hangs heavy over her head. I squeeze her knee lightly.
“I can’t even imagine how hard that’s been,” I murmur. “I lost my mom, and that was bad enough. Thought it might damn near carry my father away too, with how heartbroken he was by the whole thing…” I shake my head. “So, you don’t have any other family?”
“No,” she confesses. “I mean, I have Cara, my best friend—and she’s as good as family to me, as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t have any direct relatives here. It’s just Polly and me.”
Things start clicking into place a little more now—why she would have wanted to have a child, after a single hookup with a guy she didn’t know. She had no family of her own, but now, she does. And that’s a pretty damn good reason to want to have a daughter.
“So you were going to raise her all by yourself?” I ask, frowning, as that part of it strikes me too. “No help from anyone other than your friend?”
She shrugs. “I’ve done plenty by myself,” she replies. “I got into college, I came to this city, I got that internship with the councilor…”
“That’s what you were doing when we met?” I ask her, cocking an eyebrow. “You were there with a politician…?”
“I guess,” she replies. “It was my first time going to anything like that, like I told you. It’s crazy now, looking back…”
“So what happened to all of that?” I wonder aloud. “Your internship, college…?”
“I managed to finish college before I had Polly,” she replies, gesturing toward the baby monitor. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant for a few months, I was so distracted with getting everything done for my final exams. But the internship…”
She trails off for a moment, picking at something on her sleeve.
“I had to leave that. I couldn’t keep up with Polly and that kind of work. It takes everything from you, all your time, all your energy, and there was no way I was going to do that to my daughter.”
I eye her for a long moment—so, this job, this career that she had just started that she had already worked so hard for, she let it go for the sake of raising her daughter right? I have to admit, there’s something seriously admirable about that. Even if it breaks my heart a little to think of her turning her back on all of that.
“You don’t miss it?”
“Of course I do,” she replies. “I’ve wanted to get into politics for years, and I was doing well on that internship. I would have been offered a full-time job right out of college, I think, had it not been for…”
She stops herself before she can say her daughter’s name, as though determined not to lay the blame at her door.
“But I made my choice,” she finishes up. “And I know it was the right one. Besides, I can always go back to work, right? I can keep building my knowledge, working on my skills out here in the real world, and come back with even more causes to fight for.”
“I like that,” I reply. “I bet you’re going to kick ass when you go back to that world.”
She smirks at me slightly.
“Oh, and it might be your ass I’m kicking,” she shoots back. “I could come after guys like you, people who are involved in the criminal shit that this city needs to get rid of…”
I know this is dangerous territory we’re skirting into, but there’s something about the smile on her face right now that makes it impossible for me to care.
“Oh, yeah?” I push her. “And what exactly might that look like?”
“You don’t want to know how far I’m willing to go,” she continues, her eyes flashing with mischief. She’s enjoying this, I can tell—enjoying the way it makes her feel to flirt with me right now, even though she knows who I am. It’s not like the first night when we were together, when neither of us had a clue who the other was—no, she is damn clear on who I am, and she wants me anyway.
Or maybe even because of it.
I reach over and pull her into my lap, and her legs slip to either side of me so she’s straddling me. She’s just wearing a nightdress, and it hikes up a few inches on either side as she moves. I groan and rub my hands along her legs appreciatively, enjoying the way they feel beneath my touch.
“Fuck,” she gasps as she leans down to kiss me. Our lips just brush together at first, but soon we sink into a deeper kiss, our tongues moving against each other with the helpless hunger that can only be driven by something as dangerous as what we have. My hands move further beneath her skirt, pushing it up to expose her completely. I know I won’t be able to settle for anything less than all of her, just like I did before—I have to have her, in every way possible.
I pull the nightdress up and over her head. For the first time, she is nearly completely naked in front of me. Her body is perfection—the soft curve of her waist, the spread of her thighs, the light marks on her stomach that remind me of her recent pregnancy. She looks like something people would have worshipped in centuries past, a creature so unreal she is almost a goddess.
I pull her down to kiss her once more, and she slips her hand under my shirt, her fingertips raking against my skin as she feels me there beneath her. My cock is stirring to hardness at her touch, and I know I need to be inside of her.
I slip my hand between her legs and pull her panties aside, massaging just the outsides of her folds for a moment before I dip in to feel her wetness properly. She groans against my lips, and I grin, biting down on her bottom lip for a moment as I push my fingers inside of her.
“Fuck, you’re so wet for me already,” I murmur to her, keeping my voice low. She lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a whimper and a whine, and I know she needs this just as much as I do.
I unzip my pants and pull my cock into my hand, stroking myself a couple of times—she gazes down at me, her legs parted, her belly rising and falling swiftly, as she waits for me to guide myself against her.
And then, at last—I do. I press myself against her slit, her panties pulled to the side to make space for me, and pull her down on top of me in one swift motion.
She buries her face into my shoulder to stem the groan of pleasure that courses through her as I fill her with my cock once more. The sensation of her wrapped around me like this—it’s almost more than I can take. I feel like I could finish right here and now, just with her on top of me. I’m not sure if it’s the intensity of this night as a whole or just the sheer passion of our physical chemistry, but I don’t really care.
I pull back from her and begin to grind up and into her—not thrusting, but moving my cock inside of her so I can feel every inch of her from the inside out. I can’t take my eyes off of her face, the way she reacts to me, as though she can barely believe it’s possible for something to feel this good—and I’m right there with her.
She presses her hands into my chest after a few moments, and starts to move down to meet me, matching my motions with every thrust. Her breathing starts to catch at the back of her throat a little, and I can tell that she is seriously getting off on this. I love the way she looks when she moves on top of me, her brow slightly furrowed, her lips parted as she pants for breath. I want nothing more than to commit this sight to memory so I can never forget how damn good she looks for me right now.
I tighten my grip on her hips and start to drive myself into her with a little more force, our bodies coming together over and over again. She moves her hands to the back of the couch and uses the newfound leverage to push back onto me, and soon I feel my orgasm brewing inside of me.
I lean down to draw one of her nipples into my mouth, letting my lips graze along her delicious bud for a moment, and she lets out a low moan. All at once, I feel it, the moment she reaches her release—her body bucking down against mine, her system shuddering with a helpless pleasure as she lets it course through her. I lift my head to kiss her and she kisses me back with a frantic passion, knowing that she can’t get enough of me.
And it’s that which pushes me into my own release—I drive myself deep inside of her one last time and hold myself there, feeling the pleasure as it rushes from my cock to every nerve ending in my body. It takes every bit of restraint I have in me to keep my voice down, but I mutter a rush of curse words as I finish inside of her, her body pinned to mine, her breath still rushing out of her lungs and into mine.
By the time we both come back down to earth, we’re breathing hard, and neither of us are willing to let this moment go, not quite yet. I look up at her for a moment, pushing my hands through her hair so I can stare into her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed, and there’s a slight smile on her face. She makes no move to get off of me, as though she’s still enjoying the sensation more than she would care to admit.
“So,” she remarks, as she brushes her nose against mine. “What do you think of my tactics? Believe me now?”
I chuckle. I can hardly remember the conversation we were having before this happened. Hell, I can hardly remember why I came here in the first place.
“I don’t know,” I reply, as I pull her in for another kiss. “I think I could stand to be convinced a little more…”
