Strangers with Benefits (Siren Publishing Classic) (41 page)

They came to a compromise. He washed all of their clothes, but she put them all away.

Den was good at tempering his foul language around the children, so she let him have leeway there, but told him that if he slipped in front of the kids she would institute a swear jar at twenty bucks a pop.

Thus far, the threat worked and there hadn’t been any slipups.

He hated being coddled unless they were in bed, but that wasn’t so bad. She didn’t care for coddling that much anyway. And the little ways that she did try to pamper him were not that abrasive.

Just a little bit, but she tempered the urges as much as possible.

She had taken to packing his lunches for work when they were together and he had gotten a little attached to the notes she wrote on napkins that she placed in the bag.

So much that he saved them if she wrote something particularly funny, like the one that said: “
guess what?”
on one side and “
chicken butt!”
complete with poor sketch on the other, or super sappy, like the one that said, “
You swept me away like the sea
.”

So she bought a bag of paper napkins and took a full day to write a personal note on every one of them.

A hundred notes later, he had enough to last him a few months at least. The rest were mistakes…. Hot messes, ugly mistakes that made her feel a little guilty about the wasted trees.

She had her bad habits, like the fact that she would never enjoy working out and the longest she would stick to any kind of exercise regimen was ten days.

But the way he got around that by changing up what they did on a weekly basis.

One week, they went to Defy Gravity and jumped on trampolines for an hour each day. She had to admit, that was a blast and the kids loved it.

Another week, it was yoga as the physical therapist recommended it to help him stretch the healing tissues gently. The Bikram class was interesting, but smelly due to the number of people and the heat.

Of course, there was the couples Tantra class, which didn’t seem like work until they had to remain in odd positions without actually having sex. That was rough, on the both of them.

No matter what, they had adventure after adventure that he concocted and it took her a long time to realize Den had a gift for researching fun and had excellent planning skills. If he ever got sick of defending the world, or rather their small corner of it, he could make money crafting custom adventures for adrenaline junkies.

When the twins came back from their visitation with their father, she let Den come along for their camping getaway. Sidonie had no idea how to camp, but Mark had mentioned wanting to try it and she did her best to give her babies what they wanted within reason.

So she let Den help her set up the logistics. Actually, he did everything and she watched as he filled at cart at the sporting goods store with so much stuff that she was at a loss as to how they were supposed to carry it all. There were two tents with sleeping bags, stuff to make fire, pots and knifes of different sizes. She just watched and let him have his way as he apparently knew what he was doing as he discussed where they would be actually camping at and the merits of different materials over others with a clerk. By the time it was all said and done, she had no idea what he purchased, only that her backseat and trunk space were full to the gills.

When they marched out into the forest in the morning, she was terrified, but she put on a game face for the kids. Den knew though as she jumped at every noise the woods had to offer and he calmed her down each time.

She was scared for the children to be in another tent alone, but she knew that trying to fit all of them together would be a feat for one thing. Not to mention that both of the twins slept like wild things as if they couldn’t even contain their energy during respite and the tent would likely be on the ground the next morning.

Den had helped the kids set up each tent under her pathetic supervision and she dug a small hole to use for and necessary trips to the “facilities.”

Ugh, this was an awful idea.

But watching him nurse a small fire was damned impressive, even as she pretended it was nothing special. They cooked some meat that he had carried with them in a cooler and roasted it over the fire until it was juicy and crisp.

When they retired later that night after a snack of s’mores and hugs, Sidonie cuddled Den in the sleeping bags they had zipped together into one large pouch.

She couldn’t sleep and jumped at the sound of the trees rustling. “What’s that?” she gasped.

“Shh. Just the wind,” he whispered and wrapped an arm around her.

He must have realized she wouldn’t let him sleep until he made her go to bed, as just a little while later, she was flat on her back and the same rope he used to secure the tents was bundled around her arms and her shirt was stuffed in her mouth as he took her slowly, deliberately.

“Shh… you don’t want them to hear right?” Den breathed the words into her ear as he filled her needy cunt with the tersely abrupt motions that were all the combined bags would allow for. Despite the lack of maneuverable space, somehow he’d only made her want him more than ever before.

She shook her head. Her moans were muffled but she knew the forest was too still for her to even scream into her gag without one of the twins hearing something amiss.

She also had the bad habit of fretting about every detail, but that was the engineer in her. She had to know what would happen for every variable that she could think of. To her, the variables were almost of more import than the finished product.

But while he couldn’t cure her of that particular peccadillo, he did make good use of it instead one night that she would forever daydream about, just a month after the family camping trip.

It was their first weekend alone as the twins were at their father’s house, and Den made good use of every second of their free time.

That night he spread her over his bed, just before he blindfolded her, and proceeded to assault her with what seemed to be a dozen stimuli at once. She was strapped down with her cunt stuffed full by his cock, her anus stretched with a plug, her nipples bound with wrapped dental floss and he tickled her with a feather all at the same time, and then made her describe what every sensation felt like in English which he repeated back in Thai, filthy whispers in her ear that made his mother’s language the sexiest on earth.

That night was… indescribable.

She screamed and moaned and begged until she was hoarse and her body had become her enemy as she came over and over again with the stingiest breaks in between.

And those were for water. Every time she came, he would gift her with a sip of fluid passed from his mouth to hers.

Not to mention, she lost of how many times her forced her wrung flesh to come after the tenth orgasm or so, but even then, they were only halfway done by the point she stopped trying to keep track.

That night, she passed out after two hours of sexually decadent torture at his hands and when she came to another peak was already on the horizon under his skillful tongue. By the time he finished with her, she quivered when air blew over her flesh and nearly went into convulsions when he tried to bathe her abused cunt with a damp cloth afterward.

It was the kind of sex that was so delightful she was damn near ashamed of the way she acted, later on when she thought about it. The sex was so good she had no place to hide… anything. He stole her vestiges of modesty by the time they finished. For sure by then she was nappy, sweaty, busted, and melted all of her mascara around her eyes.

Her orgasm face had to look like The Scream mask and the worst part was that she couldn’t give two fucks about any of it. That was just how gone he had her that night, where nothing on God’s green earth mattered but him.

It was splendid, beautifully, amazingly, splendid.

So damn good, she couldn’t even look at herself in the mirror the next day.

When she finally plopped in exhaustion onto the toilet that morning, she had aftershocks when she went to the bathroom, too.

If she had a bad day, she could come back to his place and he would rub her feet, which always led to hot sex, no… lovemaking that scorched her skin and made her surrender to her own fleshly coil. When there was something to celebrate, he made certain that she didn’t have to make felicitations on her own.

Every moment she spent with him only dragged her deeper into the abyss with him. The exact same place that she was so afraid to fall into before, she was so grateful to be in now.

All in the Family

Den was so in fucking love. Before Sidonie, he assumed that he was content, but after knowing her, he wasn’t so certain of that anymore.

He couldn’t imagine a single day without hearing her voice or feeling her touch. When he thought about the future, all he knew was that she was in it.

That was something new for him. He hadn’t been with a woman before that had inserted herself into his life so neatly that she would shatter him if she left. After they had been dating for the first month, he knew she was
The One
.

She loved him. Really loved him flaws and all.

He knew that he was a guy and all, but he even had imagined what their wedding would look like. Not the dress or decorations or other girly shit. Well, maybe he had thought about the dress a little bit. When he was in the store, he passed by magazines that he would look at while he was in line and summarily put them down when it came time to check out.

So he had seen a little of this and that. But for him, the idea of getting married, or asking Sidonie to marry him was a bit nerve wracking.

Okay, so he was fucking terrified. What if she said no?

What if she said yes?

Would she want to move into his place?

Or would they buy something new?

Would she still want to live in the city?

Or would she be interested in living on the farm?

Not that he wanted to live on the farm.

He hadn’t thought about living on the farm, not at all.

But when he imagined having his own children, the farmhouse always was in the background.

Okay, so maybe he had thought about the farm a little bit.

All he knew was that things would change for all of them.

What about the kids?

Would they call him dad, or Den?

He was a ball of confusion and he wondered if this was how women actually thought, in a jumble of ideas and emotions that conflicted all of the time.

At least that was how it seemed to be with Sidonie. She could be pissed and still sport the sweetest smile on her face. Or she could do what the kids called a “mean mug,” but just mentally compiling a grocery list.

It was almost five and he wiped his hands on his pants nervously.

“Dude, you need to calm the fuck down. I can see your heart about to bust out of your chest from here. You’re gonna have a stroke before you can even get the job done,” Jackson, one of his aggravating brothers in blue and close personal friend, said from the driver’s side of the unmarked patrol car.

Den sighed and fisted his hand on the healing arm. It had healed nicely, but he had a few issues with his grip that he worked on daily. “I know, just trying to keep it together.”

“Well, you suck the hell at it.” Jackson looked at the street and popped his neck. “OTL for a black SUV with AHL plates, right?”

“Yeah.” Den sighed and looked back at his watch. He was so ready to get this day over with.

“Hold on, I think one just passed by.” Jackson pulled off the grassy median and onto the road.

A few seconds later, Den saw the SUV and nodded at Jackson, who flipped the switch for the lights and siren before he motioned to the driver to pull over. Jackson got out of the car and Den followed at a slight distance.

When his partner got to the window, it rolled down and he nodded at Den. He unbuckled the brass over the custom handcuff pocket and waited for the signal from Jackson if he needed backup.

“Miss, do you know why I pulled you over?” Jackson asked the driver.

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Remove the keys from the ignition.” When she complied, Jackson gave his next order. “License and registration please.”

“Yes, sir.” She handed the documents through the window promptly and that let him know she got them when she pulled over.

Jackson looked at the documents, then back at her and gave Den a small thumbs up. He unlatched his cuffs and waited for the signal to move in. “Exit the car, please.”

“Why?”

“You’re under arrest.”

“Why, officer?” The woman sounded surprised.

“A warrant had been issued for immediate detainment on suspicion of burglary.”

“I haven’t stolen anything!” the driver railed at Jackson.

Den stepped forward with the cuffs in his hand to provide backup.

“Step out of the vehicle, please,” he asked in the sternest voice he had at his disposal.