His Au Pair Obsession (His Obsession 2)

Emma

Mornings in the huge, rambling mansion-like townhouse that Barrett Bonneville, my boss, called home, were always chaotic. I revelled in it. I enjoyed getting the kids ready for school, and the explosions of cereal and early morning cartoons that characterised the kitchen on a Monday to Friday. I liked glimpses of Barrett before he put on his serious business-man mask and went to his important job. I liked to see him before he’d shaved, when his hair was mussed, and he was sucking down coffee by the kitchen window like his life depended on it. I liked to help however I could. I liked to be needed. I wanted to be needed by him, more than anyone. Once, I’d spotted him in his room moments after waking up, when he had been bleary with sleep, and his boxers had been tented with morning wood. I thought about that image far more often than I should.

At twenty-five, I wasn’t exactly where I’d planned on being in life. An au pair in a cool city like New York was fun, but I still hadn’t finished my degree in early years learning, and felt the days left on my expiring visa taunting me like a ticking time bomb. I didn’t want to go back to London and the empty life I’d led there. I’d grown up comfortable enough, but my father had worked long, hard hours, and my mother had died when I was only five. I grew up with a procession of different kinds of childcare, and that was undoubtedly the reason I was so passionate now about making a difference to someone. It’s hard to feel like an inconvenience, some extra baggage that a parent has to lump around, and pay others to watch. I didn’t want Henry and Chloe to feel that way. Besides, in England, I had no one I even wanted to go back to. My father and I weren’t close, and even when I was at home, he rarely cancelled his daily golf session to fit in time to see me. We were like roommates at this point in my life, and that was fine with me. There was too much resentment and old pains to ever really start again.

Barrett Bonneville and his kids were like some cartoonish ideal come to life. Fancy job and million dollar pad in the heart of the hottest city in the country? Check. Gorgeous sweet kids who adore you? Check. Hot as fuck dilf, who had no idea of his appeal? Double check. Barrett was a man ripped straight from my wettest fantasies. Why, exactly, he had taken a chance on me, with my pushy opinions and hot temper, I had no idea. Maybe he didn’t understand my bossiness thanks to my accent? If so, being from England had finally given me something useful to use in my life.

“Emma! I want chocolate milk today, not strawberry,” Henry complained, as I stood at the huge fridge, packing their lunches. Seriously, was everything in America so super-sized? The houses, the cars, even the fridges were massive. I glanced toward Barrett, who was leaning his thick thigh against the enormous marble-topped counter. Yep, even the men were big, big all over, by the looks of it. He wasn’t fat, he was fit, but he was thick, if that was a thing. He could probably pick me up with one arm and I wouldn’t be opposed to that at all. In fact, most of my bedtime fantasies started out that way.

“Ok mate, chocolate it is,” I said, swapping out the milk cartons, and double checking it was the right one, that had no dairy in it. I swear, the rules for packed lunches at Chloe and Henry’s fancy school were stricter and more convoluted than my A-level chemistry exams. In England, they just gave you a ham and butter sandwich and told you to get on with it.

“I want strawberry!” Chloe sang, deep in concentration in her task, sticking jewels onto her little pony, using honey from her toast.

“Course you do, princess,” I smiled at her. These two kids had my heart, and the thought of ever leaving them made me feel sick. But that day would come, since I wasn’t their real mother and that day was fast approaching. I would lose this perfectly imperfect little family I’d found, and I’d have to leave.

“What do you think?” A touch to my arm surprised me, and I dropped the milk cartons on the floor.

“Oof! Sorry,” I muttered, and bent down to pick them up. Barrett, who had been standing beside me, trying to get my wandering attention, leant down too. Our foreheads met with a crack, and a scalding pain shot through my chest. Hot coffee spilled right across my top half. It cooled quickly, but I could feel the liquid soaking into my bra.

“Emma! Are you alright? Are you burned?” Barrett’s voice was speaking, but I couldn’t focus on it, as I pulled my wet t-shirt off my skin with a loud shucking sound. My skin was tingling and my forehead aching.

“Fudging fudgsicles!” I swore viciously, rubbing my head. Barrett broke into a deep, rumbling laugh.

“Well, that’s a new one,” he said, still crouched beside me. I had fallen backwards and now sat crossed legged on the Italian tile. “Let me see,” he said, in that deep voice of his that made me shiver. His hands reached out. The man had huge palms, I swear. I could only imagine how they must have looked cradling the twin’s newborn heads. My ovaries twinged at the thought. I looked up and locked eyes with Barrett. He had eyes like honey, hazel brown, with gold in them. They were unsettling. His hands cupped my face and tilted my head back, a thumb ghosting over the swelling egg on my forehead. “Not too bad, but it might bruise,” he said regretfully.

“Well, a bruise never hurt anyone, really, did it?” I said, trying to be reassuring. He held my face a little longer, looking annoyed that he had hurt me. He was an overprotective man in charge of this house, and I loved it. I loved the way this big, burly dilf was holding my face between his huge palms like it was something important to him. Like I was someone special.

I’d give anything to be special to a man like Barrett.

“What about you?” I wondered, taking the chance of reaching up and pushing his thick, dark waves from his forehead.

“Don’t worry about me. I have a hard head,” he said, and gave me a grin that might have sent my panties up in a whoosh. The man had dimples. I wished I could poke my pinkie finger into one.

“Ok, well, me too,” I muttered, and started to get up.

“Wait, what about your chest… are you burned?” he asked, and I paused in the act of standing. Leaning forward as I was, and with the way I had pulled my wet t-shirt off my skin, I suddenly became aware that Barrett’s face was directly positioned before a front-row seat, down my shirt, to my wet, glistening cleavage, and coffee spotted bra. I looked at my chest, and then to him. His eyes were riveted on the sight of my breasts hanging practically in his face.

“I don’t think so,” I muttered. “I’m not really sure.” Words were deserting me in the face of the red-hot need I had for this man. My crush was raging out of control. Barrett swallowed hard, the thick column of his muscular neck bobbing with the movement and it made me feel oddly powerful. The sight of my coffee-covered chest was making his throat tight. I had superhuman powers at that very moment.

“Should I check?” he murmured, and slowly, with a confidence that belongs solely to an older man, looked up at my face, meeting my eyes dead on, and raising a cocky eyebrow. Yes. I opened my mouth to answer, genuinely unsure of what was going to come out, just when a little voice broke the tension between us.

“Did daddy break your head?” Chloe called, looking curiously around the side of the island.

“No, not her head, just her boobies,” Henry said nonchalantly. I choked out a cough of embarrassment and shot to my feet, narrowly missing banging my head for the second time on the lip of the island.

“Time, kids. Everyone go and brush their teeth,” I announced, bossily, trying to claw back some dignity. The kids grumbled, as they usually did, but actually left the room in a somewhat timely manner, leaving me and Barrett alone. The silence felt deafening.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Barrett asked me, moving toward my side. I turned to look at him, well, look up at him, being the giant of a man he was. I nodded.

“It takes more than a little scalding and head-butting in the morning to slow me down,” I said, aiming for teasing. “Seriously, I’ve had worse,” I added, trying to lighten his mood, but it only seemed to annoy him more.

“Have you?” he asked, and his sudden question caught me off guard. He was curious. Concerned. I shrugged.

“Well, not really, but believe me, I have bigger problems than getting coffee in my bra,” I tried to lighten the mood, but his question had turned into a stone that sank through my chest and landed hard in the pit of my gut.

“Have you? You can tell me, Emma -,”

“Really? Tell you what?” I asked, a brittle, forcedly jovial laugh on my lips.

“Anything.”

That one word sank through me right after the growing dread and soothed it somewhat. He looked so big and strong; he was so responsible, and caring and kind and fuck, if I didn’t want to sink into those big daddy arms and have a good cry, and let this sexy older man stroke my hair and tell me everything was alright. Then, Chloe dashed back into the room, and I turned away, and felt my cheek glow scarlet at the indecent thoughts in my head. I was losing it. The things I wanted with this sexy off-limits man were pure filth, and I was scared every time that he’d be able to read those fantasies on my face. I’d never be able to look him in the eye again.

“Emma! Henry flicked toothpaste at me!” Chloe’s squeal bounced off the walls. The sound turned to a scream as her twin brother charged after her into the room, brandishing his toothbrush like it was a sword.

“Tattle!” Henry bellowed. Barrett turned and scooped his son up with one long, solid arm, and spun him into his chest, plucking his dripping toothbrush out of his little hand.

“Time to go, don’t you think, Emma?”