“Mmm,” I hum against her clit and her back lifts off the floor like a bolt of lightning surged through her.
“Door. Someone… door.”
“Are you asking me to stop?” She reluctantly nods as I grin at her with a glistening beard. “Should I go answer it like this?”
She laughs and pulls up her pants. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Damn it. I was so close!”
“Who said we’re done? Stay here. I’ve got it.” I get up, grab a towel from one of the ladders, and wipe my face before I head to the front of the house. When I pull open the door, I can’t fucking believe it.
“Hello. Is my daughter in? I would like to speak to her.”
I check my watch, realizing that today is the day the restraining order lifted. She wasted no time.
“She’s busy.” I didn’t mean for it to come out like a growl, but I’m not mad that it did. I cross my arms and stare at her.
“Yes, I uhm,” she lowers her head and stares down at her feet, “I heard. It won’t take long, I promise.”
“If you so much as raise your voice to her, or say a fucking thing to upset her in the slightest, I will end the conversation, drag your ass out of our house, and have the cops haul you off our fucking property. Do you understand?”
I walk her to the back of the house where Lexi is holding paint swatches up to the ceiling while standing on the larger of two ladders in the room.
“Lex, shit,” I run over and hold the ladder for her. “I told you I’d do that. I don’t want you up there.”
“Oh whatever, I’m not—” She looks back and forth between me and her mother a few times, and then accepts the hand I offer her while she climbs down. She shoves her hands deep into the hoodie she stole from me years ago when we first started dating.
“Alexis…I,” her mother starts, before her face twists up and she looks like she’s about to have her own nervous breakdown. She takes a deep breath and my hand finds Lexi’s as we wait to see where she plans on taking this conversation.
“I didn’t expect you to come here,” Lexi says when her mother still hasn’t spoken.
“Yes, well, I didn’t expect to come here either. Not after how we left things. Is all of this…” She motions around the room, ending with Lexi. “Alexis, are you…?”
Lexi snorts out a loud laugh, and a second later I realize where her mother is looking at her and I laugh, before kissing her on the head. This is not my dance; she knows I’ll follow her lead.
“Yes. I should be delivering the antichrist any minute now. We just found out last week, and I forgot how quickly a demon spawn grows!”
Her mother glares at her. “That isn’t funny, Alexis. Are you actually pregnant, or are you trying to fluster me?”
“No, mother. Jamie and I are not having a baby.” She pauses before adding, “Ever.”
“Oh, well, that’s a shame. It’s a woman’s?—”
I clear my throat and level my gaze at her. She knows this will be the only warning she’s going to get.
“Anyhow, I wanted you to be aware that your fath—I am moving. To New Mexico.”
“His transfer finally came through? Wow! So is this the trial with the sixteen-year-old or the mother of two?” Lexi asks and squeezes my hand.
“Alexis, I wish you would think about what you’re doing.”
“Well, that was fun, time to go,” I step toward her and she takes a step back.
“I just mean that, well, you’ve ruined his life enough, haven’t you?”
“Get the fuck—” Lexi stops me by putting a hand on my forearm. I see the flame in her eyes go from a flicker to a raging inferno as she stares her mother down. It’s the same look she had a year ago when she had to testify against her stepfather and the defense attorney tried to twist the events and victim-blame her. It’s a look I hope she never gives me, but god does it turn me on.
My phoenix, my queen, my wife. She tore down the empire they built to imprison her. She stood in the flames, and I was beside her every step of the way.
“You could have stopped this. You could have spoken up and said something, could have listened to me or Bex. You don’t get to blame me, mother, becauseyou’rethe reason he ever came into my life. I can’t wait—” I step between them and hold Lexi’s arm to keep her from getting too close. She knows what I’m doing, and that I’m in no way protecting her mother. I don’t trust her mother and wouldn’t be surprised if she ran out of the house claiming Lexi attacked her, given the chance. Lexi stays calm, which is more terrifying. “I can’t wait till they get you into that courthouse and behind that table, because they will. They’re going to make you listen to everything he’s done, every other woman he’s assaulted, and they’re going to know that you could have stopped it. They’ll know you stood there and watched him do this to us.”
