Unconditional

“Why did we agree to have it here this year?” I groan.

She sits up and half of me is grateful that she doesn’t sit in my lap. The top half. She pulls her hair over to one side exposing her slender, flawless neck to me and all I can think about is sinking my teeth into the skin and leaving a mark. Then make her wear her hair up so the world can see that someone claimed her. She belongs to someone who is possessive enough to leave his mark on her as a warning to fuck off.

I feel the beast clawing its way up my throat and urging me towards her. I’m vaguely aw

are that she’s speaking something about Thanksgiving and how we all thought it would be fun to have it here when I have her hauled into my lap and my lips on her neck. “Cal,” she whimpers, and just like that, I’m hard as a fucking rock.

Maddie has said my name probably a million times over the course of the past ten years and now, all of a sudden, my name falling from those pouty lips has me harder than granite. “Say my name again.” My voice is so gruff, I don’t even recognize it but the shiver that moves through Maddie alerts me that she does.

“Cal,” she yelps as I bite down on her flesh. I run my tongue over the skin, doing my best to soothe the sting of my teeth. Her hands find the back of my head and she pulls at the hair as she cocks her head more allowing me further access. I love how she opens herself up to me; whatever I want from her she gives me so blindly. She feeds the beast, and if I was a better man, I’d tell her to stop. Tell her to run. But I won’t. Because the beast in me is only responding to the one in her.

The one that’s been unleashed already and doesn’t seem to want to let me go without a fight.

“Cal, as much as I want to continue this, your mom said…Ah!” I bite down and she gasps.

“Don’t talk about my mother while you’re sitting on my dick.” I’m still sucking on her neck when she finally removes my lips from her. She puts her hands on my chest and stares at me with a scolding glare, but I can see the lust lurking beneath. Her eyes are dilated, but I can’t keep my eyes off the purple mark forming on her neck. I press my fingers to the space, admiring my work and shoot her a wicked glance.

“And how am I supposed to explain a hickey?” She bites her bottom lip because I know a part of her is turned on that I left a mark. My mark.

“Make something up. I don’t care what.”

“I’m going to have to say it’s some guy.”

“I wouldn’t.” It’s a warning that I hope she heeds. “Find a scarf,” I growl at her. If she thinks I’m willing to go along with some charade where some other man gets to touch her, she better think again.

“I don’t know where this caveman side of you came from.” She leans forward and presses her lips to mine. “But I think I love it.” She hops off the bed before shooting me a conspiratorial wink. “He’ll be much easier to break.”

By the time I get downstairs, my mother is already in the kitchen, much to my dick’s and my disappointment. I’d had plans to sneak up behind Maddie and kiss her senseless until someone arrived. But it was probably for the best. Maddie still had three more days left off from school and with the way things were progressing between us, too much time alone together would probably end with my dick inside of her.

Feelings of shame flood my brain. No. I’d drawn that line in the sand. Under no circumstances could I fuck her.

This is just a phase. A weird phase where she’s figuring out how to transition me to the next phase in her life.

And what are you doing? my voice of reason, who’d been pretty fucking quiet up till now, finally speaks up.

I’m…trying to navigate a relationship with a soon to be eighteen year old girl that no longer reminds me of the girl I rescued when she was seven.

I’m a cop, and I know the rules of fooling around with an underage girl. I cringe at the rationalizations that are already creeping into my brain: that I haven’t touched her, I haven’t seen her naked, I haven’t fucked her. Yes, we’ve kissed a lot, and I’ve made her come…and she’s made me come…

“Mom.” I smile, as I enter the kitchen, trying my best to shake off my previous thoughts. Warm brown eyes that I swear have the ability to bring world peace smile at me from behind her glasses. Her hair is beginning to gray, but she’d been dying it for the past few years to combat that, so it is still the honey amber color that I’ve seen my whole life. She’d already taken her shoes off and is wearing the slippers she keeps here and has poured herself a glass of orange juice, that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure didn’t have champagne in it…or vodka.

My mother has had an ongoing relationship with alcohol ever since my dad split, and while it wasn’t enough for Henry and me to admit she had a problem, it lurked in the shadows of all our family dinners and interactions. “Cal! Hi, honey, happy Thanksgiving!” she chirps as she pulls me into a hug and squeezes. “My darling boy, you look good.” She puts her hands on my cheeks and squeezes them together to purse my lips. “Last few times I’ve seen you, you’ve looked tired. You look so well rested. No bags.” She points under my eyes.

I keep my eyes off of Maddie who is in the corner peeling potatoes, trying to ignore the fact that the reason I’ve been sleeping so well has been because she’s been sharing a bed with me. And what we’ve been doing before we succumb to sleep.

“Thanks, Mom, you look good too. Where’s Grant?” I ask about my not quite stepfather. Grant Donovan has been my mother’s boyfriend since I was about seven years old, so for all intents and purposes, he is my stepfather.

“Oh, I sent him to the store. I forgot milk, and you didn’t have any! Mads, I could have sworn you told me you had milk?”

“We do have milk, Margie.” She doesn’t turn around to look at us, but I can already see the sassy look on her face.

“No, that is water, dear.”

Maddie spins around and puts her hands on her hips and furrows her brow. I notice her hair is down, though she’s wearing a headband to keep her hair out of her face and a scarf to cover her neck over a t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Told you,” I tell her because, quite frankly, that skim milk shit is water.

It’s nearing noon. Grant and I are sitting in the living room watching the Lions game when I hear commotion in the hallway.