Dawson
Four months later
This was what heaven must feel like.
I gripped the sheets next to me, biting down hard on my lip to stay quiet. The sensations shooting up from between my legs were making it hard, though.
I had thought waking up to find Mickie’s head bobbing over my lap was a dream.
But I’d quickly realized her mouth on my dick was a very real thing.
“I’m about to come, baby,” I whispered.
She groaned around my shaft, giving me permission. She even tightened her lips around me and sped up her pace.
Bursts of light were starting to shoot off behind my eyelids, like fireworks. I was almost there…
Someone pounded on our bedroom door. Two someones, if I wasn’t mistaken.
My eyes shot open as Mickie’s darted to me.
“Mommy, Daddy! Wake up!” shouted Gabby.
“Yeah, it’s Christmas!” Leo said. “Get up!”
Yeah, well, Santa Claus was up all night and didn’t get enough time with Mrs. Claus. He needed his presents, too.
I dropped my head back onto the pillow and groaned, sounding pathetic.
“We’ll be down in a minute,” Mickie called.
I looked at her in surprise. She just grinned.
“You want to finish, don’t you?” she asked.
“Is that a serious question?”
She smiled and lowered her mouth. A few minutes later and it was Merry Christmas to me. She sweetly kissed the six-inch scar on my right lower abdomen before climbing off the bed.
I sighed deeply. “God, I love you.”
She chuckled. “You ought to. Now, hurry up and get dressed before those little heathens open up all their presents.” She gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “And I love you, too.”
“Can we open our presents now?” Leo asked the second he saw us coming down the stairs.
I yawned, heading straight for the coffee machine. “We have to wait until Uncle Parker, Kinley, Sage, and Uncle Mason get here. And grandma.”
Mason and Sage were the first to arrive, their arms loaded down with presents wrapped in The Nightmare Before Christmas paper.
“Me need coffee,” Mason growled in a monster-like voice. He started chasing the kids around the room. “Me have little children for breakfast if me no have coffee.”
The twins squealed. Loudly.
“Get him coffee, Mom!” Leo yelled.
Gabby jumped up on my lap. “Save me, Daddy!”
I winced from the screaming, but wrapped my arms around her. She was too sweet not to.
“It’s too early for the Coffee Zombie, bro,” I said.
Parker and Kinley burst through the door next, looking more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than should be legal. Though I quickly found out why.
Kinley flashed her left hand at everyone. “We’re engaged!”
A chorus of feminine screams filled the room, making my ears ring.
Mason shot me a look of understanding. “It’s too early for engagements, too.”
But not really. Everyone was thrilled for the two of them. Mason and I gave our younger brother giant hugs, and told him how proud of him we were.
I’d never seen the guy so ridiculously happy.
I slapped him on the back. “Well, you only waited twenty years. Be grateful if she can stand you for the next twenty.”
I got an eye roll and a smack on the ass for that comment. Mickie was the ass smack, in case that wasn’t clear. Our family wasn’t that weird.
Mom was the last to arrive, and you could tell she was nervous. She’d completed her rehab program in November, and had been living in her own small apartment a few blocks away from us ever since. Understandably, she hadn’t wanted to go back to the house she’d lived in with Sal in D.C. And Mickie and I thought it would be good for her if she was near us and Mason.
She seemed to be doing really well.
She even had a job at a florist shop not far from her place.
She tentatively stepped into the room, a small smile on her face. Parker took the pile of gifts from her hands and planted a kiss on her cheek.
“Merry Christmas everyone,” she said.
“Grandma!” the twins yelled in unison.
They both ran over to her, grabbed both of her hands, and dragged her down onto the floor to play with the toy train running around the Christmas tree.
Needless to say, they loved having a grandma.
She had officially met them a few months ago when I took them up to see her in rehab. After that, I’d seen an even bigger change in her health and attitude than before. It was as if she had found a new purpose in life.
To be the best grandmother she could be.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was her way of trying to make up for the type of mother she’d been to us.
But the thing she didn’t get, which the three of us should probably bring to her attention, was that she had become the type of mother we’d always wanted. Her being around like this, smiling and healthy and being a grandmother to my kids, was all we’d ever asked for.
“All right,” I announced, rubbing my hands together. “Time for presents.”
The kids went nuts, of course, and tore through their gifts while us adults played our Most Hideous Gift game. It was like Secret Santa, but everyone had to give the worst gift they could find to the person whose name they drew. Everyone voted on a winner at the end, whose prize was whatever he or she wanted. Within reason, of course.
After it was over, I went to the laundry room to pull out an extra special gift that had to be given separately.
I set the large wrapped item down in front of Kinley.
“Merry Christmas,” I told my soon-to-be sister-in-law.
She looked at it with trepidation.
I grinned, winking. “Consider it an early wedding gift.”
Three seconds later, the paper was ripped off, and the entire room of people was roaring with raucous laughter.
Parker buried his face in his hands, groaning, “You did not.”
“Oh, my God,” Kinley said, clutching her stomach. “That’s freaking hilarious.”
It was a life-size blowup doll of Parker, wearing nothing but a Santa hat and a small red Speedo with jingle bells attached. Giant bold words above his head read, “HAVE YOU BEEN NAUGHTY OR NICE?”
The graphics guy had superimposed the hat and Speedo onto Parker’s picture. The picture was taken from a Calvin Klein ad he’d done a while back that I told him I would never let him forget.
I’d kept my word.
But really, it was just revenge for the cardboard cut-out he’d had made of me years ago. A very unflattering one that wasn’t even of my body. I’d tried to burn the thing so many times, but Mickie told me she would divorce me if I ever did.
She seemed to think it was hilarious.
Well, I thought payback was, too.
“I just thought Kinley could use some company when she’s not on the road with you,” I said to Parker. “Better than your video stripteases, right?”
Mason went up behind Parker, gripping his shoulders in laughter. “Ho, ho, ho, bro!”
Parker glared at me from across the room. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Then his expression changed. A devious grin spread across his mouth, making mine disappear.
Shit. That look was never good for me.
He pulled something out of his coat pocket. “You know, I was saving this for just the right moment.” He glanced at the blowup doll. “I’d say this is it.”
He turned the item around for everyone to see. It looked like a DVD movie case. I didn’t recognize the name, Roar of the Beast. Was that supposed to mean something? I leaned forward, squinting closer at the image on the cover—
Wait. Was that…?
“No. Way!” Mickie shouted, snatching the case out of his hands. Her wide eyes shot to me. “It’s you! This is the movie we were in!”
“What?” Sage screeched. “You were in a movie?”
“When was that?” Kinley asked.
I stuck my arm out. “Give me that.”
Mickie handed it over and sure enough, there I was smack on the cover. Just me, standing on top of that car with a torched two-by-four raised above my head. My face was a mask of fury, my mouth wide open. I must have been in the middle of shouting that ridiculous rant.
I couldn’t even remember what I’d said.
“How in the hell did you find this?” I growled.
“I have my ways,” Parker answered, waggling his eyebrows. “They say there’s one pivotal scene in there that makes the entire movie. They even renamed the whole thing after that scene was shot. I have to wonder, Dawson. Might you have the…Roar of the Beast?”
Everyone burst into laughter.
“Color me intrigued,” Mason mused.
Mickie was cracking up behind her hand, trying not to lose it. “Wait until you see it,” she murmured.
I held the case up. “This is never going to see the light of—”
Mason swiped it out of my hand. “Oh, we’re watching this right after Christmas Vacation. Gabby, Leo…you guys want to see your dad in a movie?”
“Yeah!”
I glared at Parker. “This isn’t over.”
He raised his coffee mug in salute. “Can’t wait ‘til next year.”
Later, Mickie and I went into the garage and brought out our final gift for the kids.
“Guys, say hi to your new buddy,” Mickie said.
The second the twins laid eyes on their new white lab puppy with a huge red bow around its neck…more screaming.
“A puppy!”
“He’s so cute!”
“Can we name him Cuddles?”
“That’s too girly. I want to name him Thor.”
And on, and on, and on for the rest of morning.
I saved my gift to Mickie until the end. I handed her the plain envelope, which she took with a curious expression.
“Merry Christmas, Mick.”
Her giddy smile widened when she pulled out the plane and opera tickets. Her eyes flitted over them before shooting up to mine.
“You’re taking me to New York?” she asked excitedly. “For my birthday?”
Making up for the trip I’d had to cancel on her two years ago. She was crazy if she thought I’d forgotten about that.
“We’re starting in New York,” I clarified.
She looked up at me in confusion, as everyone else listened in silence.
I smiled. “I’m taking you to Italy, baby.”
Holy cow, I really couldn’t get away from all the screaming.
She jumped on top of me, wrapping herself around me like a vine as she cried and laughed and thanked me a thousand times.
I’d take a thousand kisses instead, but that could wait until later.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe you did this,” she whispered.
I covered her mouth with mine, ignoring the rest of our family in the room.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
She wiped her tears away with the biggest smile on her face. “You have no idea how happy I am. But even without this trip, I’d be just as happy. You want to know why?”
I tightened my arms around her. “Tell me.”
She leaned closer. “Because I have you, and that’s all I’ll ever need. I love you so much.”
I buried my face in her mass of curls, breathing her in like I was going to do for the rest of our lives.
“I love you, too. Always, Mickie.”
“And forever.”