"Hi," I whisper, and we don’t notice the silence in the room. I turn and see that everyone is looking at us. "Well," I say under my breath. "Here we go."
"What the fuck is going on?" my father says, putting his hands on his hips. He looks at me and then Mayson. Then he looks at Ethan, who is hiding his smile with Aubrey’s head.
Emily walks back in the room, stopping when she senses something is wrong. "What happened?" she asks, looking around, and I slip my hand into Mayson’s and smile at him.
"We’re dating," I say to them.
"Called it," Emily says and stops talking when she looks over at my father, who is shaking his head.
"Absolutely fucking not," he says and my mother goes to his side and calls his name in a whisper. "Don’t start with me, Savannah. This is not happening."
"Um, with all due respect, Dad,” I say, "I’m twenty-three."
"I don’t care if you’re sixty," he says now. "This is not happening." He uses his finger to go between Mayson and me. "Chelsea, think about your future," he says, and I just look at him, shocked. "This is about what’s at stake right now. Just last month, he was fighting for his life."
I’m about to grab my stuff and walk out of the house. "You can’t just be in a relationship with him. He…" he starts. "He…" But he doesn’t have a chance to finish because Mayson speaks.
"I know I’m not your first choice," Mayson says, and we both look over at him. "Trust me, if I had a daughter, I would not want her with someone like me. I can’t give her what she needs, but I know that I will protect her and love her. I have nothing. I am nothing."
"You are everything,” I say.
"Listen, I know that you have a lot going on right now." My father looks at Mayson.
"He’s me," my mother says, and my father looks over at her. "Right now in that spot." She wipes the tears from her face. "He was me all those years ago."
"No, he’s not," my father says.
"You are judging him because of who his family is," my mother says to my father, the tears just rolling off her cheeks. "You are doing to him what everyone did to me. We are a product of our environment. He is not his father, just as I am not my mother." She shakes her head.
"That is what everyone whispered about me every single time. That is what some of them still say about me." She looks at my father. "How many times did people tell you to walk away from me?" My father doesn’t say anything. "I loved you from afar all those years because I always felt I was nothing."
"Mom," Ethan says, and she looks over at him.
"I feel what he just said." She looks at the whole room. "I felt it deep down to my bones. Knowing that you love this person, yet everyone thinks you aren’t good enough for him. That I wasn’t good enough for you." She looks at my father. "Would you have walked away from me?"
"You know that I wouldn’t," he says, walking to her.
"Then don’t expect your daughter to," she says and bends her head. My father takes her in his arms and kisses her head. She turns and looks over at me, and I have my own tears running down my face. I look over at Emily, who just stands next to Ethan as she kisses his arm.
I look up at Mayson, who just wraps his arm around me and kisses my head as I wrap my arms around his waist. "I’m sorry," my mother says, looking at Mayson. "We taught our kids to accept everyone no matter who they are or where they come from." She looks at my father. "My husband tends to forget sometimes."
"I just don’t want her to get hurt," my father says.
"We are on the same side," Mayson says. "I tried to fight it."
"The heart wants what the heart wants," my mother says, and Ethan and my father both groan. "Excuse me?" she says, putting her hands on her hips. "Did you guys just groan at me?"
"Here we go," Emily says, and Mayson looks at me now.
Ethan and my father start trying to talk to my mother, who ignores them and walks out of the room. "You." My father points at Ethan. "This is your fault."
"You groaned with me," he tells him. "I think your groan was even louder than mine."
My father shakes his head as we hear cupboards in the kitchen slam shut. "She’s pissed," Emily says, grabbing Aubrey from Ethan. "Which means you guys go in that kitchen and say you're sorry."
"Fuck," my father says, running his hands through his hair. “Baby," he says, calling to my mother as he walks out of the room. "I’m sorry."
"I don’t have much experience in this," Mayson says low. "But what the fuck just happened?"
"You just experienced your first family talk," Emily says, "and then a family fight." She smiles at him. "You got a twofer." She kisses her daughter’s head. "Welcome to the family."
The front door opens again, and this time, Gabriel comes running in. "Mom, Dad," he says, ignoring us. "Uncle Toby and Uncle Keith taught me how to shoot a gun."
"Oh, here we go," I say, and Mayson just looks at me. "Family fight number two coming in three, two, one," I say, and we hear the front door slam again.
Chapter 27
Mayson
I turn her over and lick from her stomach up to her neck as her chest rises and falls in deep pants. "I need just…" she says softly, picking up her arm, and then it drops with a plop on the bed next to her. I suck on her neck, and she moans. "Mayson." Her hips are rising now.
I rub my cock up and down her slit, sliding in easily. I close my eyes for just a second as her pussy squeezes the shit out of me. Her hand goes to my ass to make sure I don’t move. "Not fair," she says breathlessly. "You said I could ride you."
I smirk down at her and kiss her lips. "If my girl wants to ride me…" I slip out of her, and she groans. "Then she is going to ride me." When we got home from dinner with her parents, we lay on the couch, and it was only minutes before we were both naked, and she rode me for the first time.
Now, it’s twelve hours later, and she wants to ride me again. I sit in the middle of the bed as she throws a leg over my hips. Grabbing my cock, she slides down it. "Yes," she whispers, wrapping her hand around my neck. Looking up at her, I see that her cheeks are flushed and her eyes half-closed as she moves her hips up and down on my cock. "I love you," she says right before her tongue slips into my mouth.
One of my hands goes to her hip while the other wraps around her back. I let her lead the pace this time, afraid that I hurt her this morning when we walked in from watching the sunrise, and she bent over in front of me. That led to her bent over the counter with one leg up as I fucked her ruthlessly. I thought she would look at me differently, afraid I hurt her, but she just looked over her shoulder after I came in her, and said, "We should do that every single morning."
She puts both hands behind her now as she picks up the pace. "So good," she says, closing her eyes, and I watch her tits rise and fall. I lick my thumb and rub it over one of her nipples, getting it hard. She moans, and her speed picks up. "Oh, god," she says. I lean forward and bite down on the nipple and then suck in, and her pussy spasms on my cock. "Yes."