Safe in His Arms (10 page)

He answered by breaching her hole and plunging the plug inside her. She gasped as the sensation filled her. Almost immediately, his fingers worked her clit, teasing it with tantalizing circles, then catching it with the heel of his hand when he plunged his fingers deeper. She was on the brink of orgasm within seconds, pleading for a release.

“You like that, don’t you, sweet baby?”

“Ye-es!” she gasped.

He twisted the plug within her back hole as his fingers expertly delivered everything she craved lower down.

“Oh, God, oh, God! Zac!” She let out a long squeal as her climax exploded from her core to her extremities and back again.

Twenty minutes later, her wrists were tied to the headboard, her ass was still filled with the butt plug, and Zac’s head was between her thighs. The click of Parker’s bedroom door proved just how quick her lover’s reflexes were—in the five seconds it took for her bedroom door to open, he untied her, pulled a sheet up over her, and rolled under the bed.

“Mama?” came Parker’s sleepy voice.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Is my dad here?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

She froze. Should they tell him? Zac’s voice came from below, as he rolled out from under the bed, as if that was a perfectly normal place for him to be. “Yes, I am, son. What are you doing out of bed?”

“I dreamed you were here.”

He stood up and walked to the door. “Well, you were right! Come on, let’s get you back in bed.”

“What were you doing with Mama?”

Zac only hesitated a beat. “I was playing with her. Did we wake you up?”

“No. Will you be here in the morning?”

He led Parker out of the room and into his own. She listened to the sound of their voices. “Yeah, buddy. I’ll be here in the morning. Are you going to make me breakfast?”

“Yes!” Parker said with enthusiasm. “Do you like pancakes?”

“I sure do, come on, I’ll lie down with you.”

“What song is in your head right now?”

She heard a deep rumbling laugh. “It’s called ‘Let’s Get It On,’ by Marvin Gaye.”

She chuckled. The hum of satisfaction running through her system had nothing to do with a throbbing bottom or the titillation of being tied up. The love being shown her kid—their kid—filled her heart more than any attention to her ever could.

* * *

Lying naked on her back, her breasts fell open, pointing to the outside. Like the rest of her, they were perfect—just enough to fit in his hands, with peach-colored nipples that angled upward, like the tilt of her freckled nose. She smiled as he circled one areola with his fingertip. “So, why high school English? I see you more as a kindergarten teacher.”

She laughed. “Me? No way. You have to wear Christmas sweaters to teach kindergarten. No, I always wanted to be an English teacher. Literature is my life. I was the kid who always had her nose in a book—reading chapter books by the end of kindergarten. Take me to a bookstore and I could stay for hours—holding books, smelling them, studying their jackets, curling up in a chair and savoring the first crack of the spine.”

Having succeeded in making her nipple stand at attention, he moved onto its twin. Still in a post-coital languor, she lowered her lids to half-mast and regarded him.

“Do the kids give you a hard time?”

“Nah, not after the first week or so. I figure my job is to teach them to love literature as much as I do. They come in thinking Shakespeare’s an old dead guy and they leave quoting Hamlet’s soliloquy, not because I make them, but because they realize it rocks. And that is what I love about my job.”

Her passion lent a glow to her words, and he realized he’d never felt that way about anything, especially not his job.

“You really do love it, don’t you?”

She smiled. “Yeah. The first time I got a kid excited about a book, I knew I’d found my calling. Maybe it’s not as impressive as most jobs, but I know it’s my purpose in life.”

He stared at her, every hair on his limbs and head standing on end.
Purpose in life.
But what was it about those words was his intuition telling him to pay attention to? What did he need to know about his purpose in life?

* * *

Lips parted, face flushed, Becca’s breath rose and fell steadily while she slept. He heard none of the rasp of asthma, as the ease of slumber softened whatever constrictions her nervous system fired when she got anxious. He wanted to take away all the worries that made her gasp for breath. He only wanted to hear her gasp in pleasure, under his ministrations.

She opened her green eyes and blinked at him, a moment of confusion as she processed his presence in her bed.

“Good morning,” he murmured.

“Mmm,” she smiled. “Were you just lying awake watching me?”

“Yeah.” He rolled her to her back and climbed over, resting his weight on his elbows. “Listen, I want to talk to you.”

She stiffened—another anxiety he wanted to erase.

“Yesterday I didn’t honor your safe word. I want you to know if I’d really thought—”

“I know,” she interrupted, and he understood. She didn’t want to hear it spelled out that she’d had a choice—the idea of having the control wrested from her was part of the turn-on.

“So, do you consent to my spankings?” he asked softly. “I can punish you when I choose, whether you want it or not?”

He felt her nipples harden against his chest. Her lips parted and her breath stopped. He leaned down and bit her earlobe. “Breathe, Becca,” he murmured in her ear.

“Yes,” she gasped.

He kissed her neck. “Good,” he said, “because I enjoy taking you in hand.”

Her head dropped back and she arched a little underneath him.

“But I know with great power comes great responsibility,” he said, moving to the side and rolling her to her belly. “So I’d better inspect my work to see how you came out.”

He trailed his fingers over the punished flesh, still marked with pin-prick blood dots underneath the skin, and what would be a few light bruises.

“I couldn’t have taken any more,” she assured him.

He smiled and leaned down to speak in her ear again. “I’ll be the judge of that. If you don’t want it worse, you’d better obey me in all things, sweetheart.”

Goosebumps stood up on her arms and her thighs opened. He chuckled and slid a finger between her legs, not surprised to find her pussy slick.

Not to be distracted, she tried to roll back over, but he placed a hand on her back and held her down on her belly. “But…Zac?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Um, you won’t always spank like that, will you?”

“No, sweetheart, that was a severe spanking for a severe infraction. You aren’t going to test that one again, are you?” He slid his finger along her swollen labia.

“No, sir,” she said breathlessly.

The sound of Parker’s door opening made him withdraw his hand and release her.

“Pancake time!” Parker called, throwing the door open.

He laughed and climbed out of bed, hiding his erection while he pulled on his boxer briefs. “All right, buddy. Let me take a quick shower and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

After a shower and breakfast, Parker was kicking and punching the air. “Hey, Dad,” he said, startling Zac with his first use of the moniker, “will you teach me how to fight?”

“
No
,” Becca said at the same time he said “Sure.” He glanced at Becca, who was frowning, her hands on her hips.

He crossed the room and sat on the couch. “I’ll tell you what, buddy,” he said. “I will teach you, but first I want you to tell your mom about what’s been happening to you in the school bathroom.”

Parker’s face closed, showing alarm, followed by anger. His jaw protruded and he folded his arms across his chest, glaring at him.

“What’s happening to you at school?” Becca asked sharply.

“Nothing,” he said, turning sulky with shame.

“Come here for a sec,” he said, beckoning to Parker. When the boy didn’t move, he stood and reached forward, picking him up and settling him on his lap. “I bet you think you’re too big for laps, don’t you?”

Parker shrugged.

“Listen,” he said, trying to catch his son’s eye, and when failing, speaking into his hair instead. “I want you to always tell your mom when something upsets you at school, okay?”

“Why?” he grumbled to the floor.

“Well, she can help.” He didn’t look at Becca who was hovering nearby, looking uncertain as to whether she should interrupt.

“No, she can’t.”

“Yes, she can.”

“Like, how?”

“In lots of ways. Maybe she would put you in Kung Fu.”

This got the boy’s attention. He looked up, hope widening his green eyes. He swallowed. “You were there, weren’t you?”

It had been one of his out-of-body experiences. He’d wound up in the boys’ bathroom with Parker, watching his son tormented by the boys at school, who were poking his butt with a pencil while he tried to pee in the urinal. Parker was upset and scared and the boys kept laughing and shoving him, taking his backpack and lunchbox and throwing them in a urinal. Zac had spoken to him, and it had seemed as if Parker had heard him. “They can’t hurt you. Pick up your things and walk away. Don’t cry. Don’t look mad. Shove the one by the door when you walk out.”

Parker had done as he instructed, and Zac had tried to follow him out, but the scene had faded and he was back in his own pain-wracked body.

Parker blinked at him now. “It hasn’t happened again.”

Becca came into the living room and sat on the red micro-suede armchair. “What happened?” she asked, softly this time.

Parker climbed off Zac’s lap and sat beside him. “They were being mean to me. They took my lunch and said they were going to flush it down the toilet.”

She nodded. “What did you do?”

“I did what Dad told me to do. I took my lunch back and pushed one of them.”

Becca’s glance skipped to his and he saw remonstrance. “It wasn’t exactly like that,” he offered lamely.

“So are you going to teach me how to fight them?” Parker asked eagerly.

“I’ll teach you how, but you’re not allowed to fight,” he said, eying Becca, whose lips were pursed. “Unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He touched Parker’s knee. “Knowing you
can
will keep you from ever getting into a fight.”

“Huh?”

“You were afraid that day.”

Parker’s face closed again in sulky defensiveness.

“No, listen. Those boys fed off your fear. It made them feel like they had power. But they didn’t. They don’t have power unless you choose to give it to them. And you always have a choice.”

“What if they beat me up?”

Zac shrugged. “What if they do?”

Parker’s eyes widened and he could feel Becca grow tense. “It’s not that big a deal to get beat up.”

“Zac,” Becca warned.

* * *

“No, really, it’s not,” Zac went on, his eyes flicking to her. “But what if you decided you weren’t going to let them?”

Parker stared at him. “How would that stop anything?”

“Remember what I said—your fear made them
think
they had power. If you refuse to give them power, they’ll look for someone else to bother.”

Becca wasn’t sure whether she wanted to climb over Zac and catch him in a lip lock, or tell him to keep his insane ideas to himself. She didn’t know if he could be trusted to judge what was safe for their son, considering he was a man who nonchalantly applied superglue to a wound that clearly should have been stitched in a hospital. His advice to Parker made her nervous, but seeing him parent—the love and attention he gave to their son—expanded her heart by tenfold. And at least he had an answer for Parker. What would she have done if Parker had told her when it had happened? She would have called the principal and his teacher and demanded some kind of better supervision, but she wouldn’t have known what to say to Parker—how to take away the victimization, how to repair his confidence. She got up from the overstuffed armchair and knelt at their feet, putting one hand on each of their knees. Zac went still, watching her intently.

“May I take Kung Fu, Mom?”

She looked at Zac, feeling the strangeness of sharing a parenting decision with another person. He gave a slight nod.

“Yes, I’ll look into it, Parker.”

“Yes!” he said, doing his adorable fist pump.

“I’ll research it, Becca,” Zac said, looking tentative, like he wasn’t sure how much of the parenting she would let him do. She felt a small burden lifting from her shoulders. For the first time, she had someone to share the enormous job of bringing up a child.

Later that night, after Zac had disappeared for most of the day, then reappeared at midnight in her bed, after another session of mind-blowing sex, she ran a finger over the cut on his side. “So how did you know Parker was being bullied?”

He took a breath, then exhaled. “I was being tortured. So I left my body and I found myself with Parker.”

“Is that why they call you Ghost?”

He shook his head. “No. Nobody knows I do that.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know. The first time it happened, I thought I’d died. I was tied to a chair with a bag over my head and five Iraqi soldiers interrogating me. I figured I was going to endure a slow death if I wasn’t rescued.

“I’d been in continual pain for a long period of time, so the endorphins were all worn off and I was totally out of juice and then suddenly I was with you—in your old apartment. Parker was a newborn and you were in a rocking chair, nursing him. Your mom and sister were in the kitchen talking. I hadn’t seen him yet—I hadn’t even known you’d given birth already. I stood over your shoulder and looked at his tiny face, and I could see myself in it.”

Zac’s eyes filled with tears at the memory. “I thought it meant I was dead,” he said, “and my life had been worth living because I’d been a part of making that miracle.” He waved his hand. “Not a big part, of course.”

She laughed.