Angela

The sounds of Cooper stirring in his crib woke her from a deep slumber. She couldn’t recall having been quite so deeply asleep in a long, long time. Feeling rested beyond belief, it didn’t even bother her that she had to pull herself from bed to see to him.

“Who’s a good little guy?”

She blinked several times at the voice. Cooper couldn’t really talk yet. Not in full sentences, nor a voice so deep. Her befuddled mind refused to sort out just what was going on, instead insisting that she open her eyes to provide it with more knowledge. Irritated, she opened her eyes at last to see Noah standing near the crib with Cooper in his arms, bouncing gently as he spoke to her son in hushed tones.

Her first instinct was “That’s my child!” and she tried to figure out why Noah was holding him. She hadn’t given him permission to. But as awareness fought off the sleep-addled part of her brain, she remembered what had happened the night before, and why Noah was there, in her bedroom with her.

He was clad only in his tight boxer briefs, she noticed now as her eyes traversed his body from head to toe. A memory of him on top of her from the night before, thick, powerful arms pressed into the bed on either side of her face as his hips moved against her came rushing back.

He can please me and handle a child. We might have a winner here, folks.

She kept herself quiet, watching Noah calm Cooper down as best as he could.

“Mommy will be up soon, and she’ll feed you then,” he whispered to the baby. “But she needs a little bit of rest, so you’ll just have to deal with Mr. Noah until then. Can you handle that?”

Cooper giggled and made a happy-sounding noise. In response Noah lifted him high into the air, then brought him down to his chest, bent his knees and straightened, once more lifting Cooper as high as he could, stopping just short of the ceiling. Her child laughed and gurgled happily as this was going on.

Then, without warning, Noah released him for a split second before catching him and bringing him back into his embrace. It was the merest instant of free-flight—his hands never really left Cooper’s body—but it still made her gasp in surprise.

Noah turned, seeing that she was awake.

“Good morning,” he said sweetly, lumbering over to her and planting a kiss on her forehead. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Very,” she said after catching her breath. “I…I didn’t think you’d be here, to be honest with you,” she said. “I figured you’d have had to go to work or something.”

He shook his head. “I’m on the night shift tonight. So you can be stuck with me all day if you’d like.”

Cooper made a noise. Noah glanced at her, then at him. “But I think he needs to be changed first.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I do believe you’re right. Must have been all that high-flying activity,” she teased.

“Saw that, did you?” he asked, looking slightly embarrassed.

“I did,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “It was cute. And very sweet of you to try and let me sleep, but you could have woken me. He’s my duty, after all. A minute or two of sleep isn’t going to matter.”

Noah lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah, a minute or two.”

Angela frowned and looked at the clock for the first time that morning. The blue lights of her little alarm clock showed the time as 8:47 a.m.

“No way,” she said. “How did…”

He shrugged. “There was a bottle of milk in the fridge. I heated up until it was warm and let him have it. I hope that’s okay. I would have given him baby food of some sort, but I don’t know what’s what. I just wanted you to be able to sleep in a bit.”

“A bit!” she said in a mixture of surprise, elation, and worry. “I slept in by like two hours!”

Noah smiled. “That was the point, you know. You were up late feeding him. I wanted to ensure you’d get some rest.” He hesitated. “You aren’t mad, are you?”

“Mad?” she asked, sitting up onto the edge of the bed and letting the covers fall away from her underwear-clad body. “No. Hell no even.” She took Cooper from Noah’s arms and headed for the bathroom and the baby changing station there. “You let me deal with this guy, and maybe I’ll show you just how not-mad I am.”

Noah went still. “Yes, ma’am.”

She grinned and then set to work cleaning and changing her son. It wasn’t a very sexy task, and was actually downright stinky. But she was used to it, and the extra hours of sleep had left her in a fantastic mood.

With him changed and fed she strapped him into his little jumper play-center combo thing that had been gifted to her from a human family in Cloud Lake that no longer had a need for it and went back to Noah as Cooper bounced happily around.

“Now, where were we?” she asked, running her hands down his body, over the waistband of his boxers and toward—

“As much as I’ll probably regret doing this in a minute or two,” he said with a smile, “I’d rather do something else with you.”

She blinked, feeling a little hurt, but also intrigued. He was willing to turn down a blowjob, because he wanted to do something else with her?

“You must really enjoy spending time with me,” she said.

Noah’s lips twitched up into a smile. “Angela, you have no idea.”

It was one of the few times he’d actually said her name to her, and she shivered at the ease with which it spilled from his lips, rolling off his tongue with a grace and flow that just sounded right coming from his mouth.

“What is it you wanted to do so badly that you’re turning me down?” she asked, licking her lips with a slight exaggeration.

He grimaced and shook his head. “Not fair. I’m supposed to be the one trying to seduce you!”

She laughed. “Now where’s the fun in that? It’s the new age; it’s all about equality!”

“Anyway,” he said somewhat forcefully, but with a smile on his face. “I thought that perhaps we could leave Cooper with Rachel and we’d do something. Just the two of us.”

Angela dipped her head from side to side as she thought about it. “Hmmm. Maybe. But I’d have to ask Rachel. I don’t know if she’d be willing to take Cooper.”

She purposefully didn’t mention her own unease at leaving her child with someone else, even her own best friend who had a child of similar age and knew everything there was to know. It wouldn’t be that strange. Angela had looked after Karlie several times before to give Hector and her some time to themselves. Maybe it was time she took up the reciprocal offer.

“I’ve already asked,” Noah said with an innocent look. “Rachel may be here shortly to get everything she needs.”

Angela’s jaw dropped open. “You went behind my back to ask my best friend if I could dump my child on her?”

“Pretty much,” Noah said, unrepentant.

“And what did she say?”

He pulled out his phone and read from it. “To quote Hector, who was speaking to her for me, ‘Rachel says hell yes, but only if you do something fun and leave her satisfied.’” Noah looked up. “Seeing as how I think I’ve done the second part, it’s just the something fun that we need to take care of. And I have just the thing for that.”

“You’ve put a lot of work into this,” she said cautiously.

“Which means you can’t back out now,” he told her. “Otherwise I’ll feel really let down, and will have gone to all that effort for nothing.”

“Not cool. This is blackmail,” she said, crossing her arms. Secretly she was beyond excited and couldn’t wait for him to take her out on a child-free date. It sounded like a dream.

“I know. You’ve got no choice though. So start getting ready. We leave in less than an hour, and Rachel will be here within the next half an hour to pick up Cooper. So get this in gear,” he said, giving her butt cheek a firm tap. She gasped playfully and shook her head at him before heading into the bathroom to turn on the shower.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” she said as he appeared in the door, his boxers falling to the floor as he entered.

“No apologies for that, or for what I’m about to do to you,” he said, his voice dropping several octaves as he neared, grabbing her and bending her roughly over the counter.