“Because dating your assistant is…”
“Against everything I’ve been told, and yet, it feels so right,” he answers, taking my hand and pulling me onto the bed. “You feel right.”
“Slow,” I say, pushing myself against him and resting my head on the crook of his arm. “Even when you drive me crazy and I want to stab you, I do like you, Henry Aldridge—a lot.”
“You can tell me all the ways you’ve thought about killing me tomorrow. For now, close your eyes,” he mumbles against my hair and kisses the top of my head.
I fight the need to sleep because I want to be awake while I spend time with him, but it’s impossible. Being between his arms relaxes me so much that I’m fast asleep in only a couple of seconds.
Henry
When my grandfather used to sit me down in his office to talk to me about my future, I wasn’t paying much attention. Tell me which ten-year-old child would understand that someday he’d be inheriting an empire, and be excited about it?
As the years passed, I grasped more and more of what my role as Henry L. Merkel Aldridge would be once I took over my dominion. According to Cyril’s teachings, the only people I should be loyal to are him and myself. In this case, his memory. Love isn’t real, marriages always end, and children can deceive you. I never met my grandmother. No one ever talked about her.
Was he in love with her and she left him after realizing he was a bastard?
I loved my grandfather, but he wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t much different from William, but at least he had the decency to raise me and give me a morsel of attention.
I’ve spent most of the night holding Sophia in my arms and wondering about my future—our future. It’s not easy to think beyond this weekend, even harder to consider there’s more than the eighteen months we’re stuck here. Cyril wouldn’t approve of my relationship and the future I’m planning with her.
When I envision a future with her, I see two roads. The one where we stay together and create a family. And the one where she leaves because why would she bother with someone like me?
I slowly continue running my fingers along the smooth skin of her arm, watching her chest rising with each breath she takes and making a soft sound when she exhales. It’s soothing. The calm she always brings me keeps me sane, but this, listening to her breathing while she’s asleep, gives me a peace I’ve never experienced before. I even slept a couple of hours more than I usually do.
It’s hard not to kiss her. I’m dying to press my lips against her neck and run my mouth up and down her body while I nibble her. But I’m still unsure about the pace of this relationship. I don’t want to fuck it up.
This, waking up with a woman, is a first for me. There’s a lot more involved in this strange milestone. Usually, it happens to many men during their late teens. For a late bloomer, it’d be their early twenties. For me, it never happened.
My boarding school was technically all boys, however, there was an all-girl school only a mile away. By the time I was fifteen, I had fooled around with a few of them. No one should judge me. I was a normal horny teenager. At sixteen, I lost my virginity to a girl who was in her senior year and had enough experience to guide me into the next step. We were fuck buddies for about a month before she realized I wasn’t a senior.
Losing my virginity in the locker room wasn’t romantic. Once I graduated from high school, the dating contracts began. They included a clause where it states that there won’t be any sleepovers and I have control of the condoms all the time. Pretty anti-climactic. According to my grandfather, he heard of cases where the women inseminated themselves with the junk leftover inside them.
The guy was paranoid and old school. He had no idea that they sell condoms coated with spermicide, and I wasn’t going to go into health class 101 with the old guy. Until I came to live in Baker’s Creek, I hadn’t realized that even though he’s been dead for years, I still followed all the crap my grandfather fed me without questioning it. Even the one I didn’t pay attention to but is now forged in my cells.
Maybe I believed it was a penance I had to endure to make up for my mother’s mistake. For not fulfilling my purpose, as they had expected. I’m a successful man, yet, I feel like everything I have done for the past years hasn’t fulfilled my own expectation, because, in fact, I don’t have many.
This town has become my goal. This woman became my world. My vision of the future includes her and whatever happens. For the first time, I’m not obsessing with projections, fallback plans, or mergers. I don’t want what Hayes has with Blaire, but I definitely want a little family. My own version with Sophia that includes a kid, maybe more than one.
What would it be like to have a full house with children running around?
More exciting than those summers I used to spend in this house with my brothers. I would be watching my little ones running around the backyard, laughing without any worry, and knowing they are loved and cherished since the first moment we learned that they were finally coming to us.
These are strange thoughts for a man like me. Do I even deserve to wish for a future like that one?
Sophia stirs, molding herself closer to me, her leg pressing against my morning wood. When I look into her beautiful, sleepy face I see her big brown eyes watching me.
“Morning, beautiful,” I greet her, kissing her nose. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been asking myself why I haven’t done this before.
What stopped me from letting everything I feel for her come out and give myself to the emotions freely?
“Did you get any sleep?” she questions with a sleepy smile while tracing my jaw with her delicate hand.
“More than usual,” I answer, kissing her mouth and running the pads of my fingers under her shirt. “Maybe you’re the remedy I’ve been searching for.”
“I could remedy other things,” she says, sliding her hand over my erection. “Happy to see me?”
“Slow,” I warn her. “We said we’d take this slowly, remember?”
She licks her lips. “I can do, slow,” she stretches the word.
I gasp, as her fingers brush against my length and hold my breath when she tugs my boxers down, saying, “Slowly,” and releasing my shaft. My gut stirs up with the thoughts of having her mouth on me, envisioning touching the back of her throat as she takes me deep.
“Soph,” I warn her. “I promised…”
“What is it, Mr. Aldridge? Afraid of having a little fun before breakfast?”
I get more aroused as her small hand wraps around my length, and I shudder when she glides it down, almost touching my balls, and then all the way up. I had fantasized often about having her on her knees, fucking her sassy mouth. But I never thought about making it a reality.
I let out a low groan as her tongue touches the tip of my cock’s head. She then squeezes it gently between her fingers and thumb. She flips her body, placing herself on top of me and then sliding down, her hands moving across my torso.
She opens her mouth and closes her lips softly over the crown of my length, swirling her tongue around it as she slides her hand up and down.
“Fuck,” I growl as I feel her breath on my cock while she swallows it slowly.