Elsie
"I can't move," I declared, dropping backward onto the bed, my whole body aching.
"Baby girl, you haven't slept in a week," Paine told me, sitting down beside my body.
To be fair, he hadn't slept much in a week either. The holiday season was always a crazy time, between lights and Christmas parties, and shopping. But the holiday had taken on a much different level of sleep-deprived hell after having children. Take your normal list, add school holiday concerts, and holiday parties, trips to see Santa, having to sneak presents into the house, wrap under the cover of darkness, find hiding places, bake cookies, get a Christmas portrait where everyone's eyes are open, their smiles are genuine enough, and no one is trying to make a silly face, filling them out for all your friends and families and the weirdos who send you Christmas cards who you didn't think you were close enough with to send Christmas cards, go to see the manger, and, finally, take some time out to volunteer to teach our very privileged children that not everyone in the world was as lucky as they were, and that it was important to be aware and sensitive of that fact, and to try to help as much as possible.
Then, after all that, there was the three a.m. mad dash downstairs to hide those mothereffing elves. And I couldn't just move them. Oh, no. Because all the Pinterest-Moms at the school did all kinds of crazy shit like making them have parties with Barbies and Batman or spill the Alphabets and spell out crap with the letters, making my kids expect those wow-moments as well.
Whoever came up with those elves could go jump off a cliff.
It. Was. Exhausting.
But Paine was right there with me, holding down the paper so I could tape it, refilling my coffee cup while I wrote out Christmas cards, doing the actual baking part of baking cookies, so I didn't burn them like I was inclined to do.
We had just come up from putting the presents under the tree, eating Santa's cookies and drinking his milk, and making sure the baby gate was set up at the top of the stairs so no one could go down without us knowing.
It was just after midnight.
We would have to get up in five hours to start opening presents if we wanted to be able to get to Gina's house for food prep, eating, and another round of presents.
After that, I planned to curl up in a tub with a bottle of red.
For two whole hours.
And then I was going to get Jackson and Willa to bed, and I was going to sleep for nine whole, uninterrupted hours. Because those effing elves were going back to the north pole where they belonged.
"It's a marathon, not a sprint," I told him, as I did every time he told me I needed to take a rest. "Luckily, I drag my ass onto that treadmill four times a week all year to prepare for it."
"Fucking miracle what you can fit into your day. Kids, work, gym, house."
"You're right there with me," I said, slapping a hand down on his thigh. We had learned to swing shifts as much as possible, so one of us was around for Willa. On days when he was booked, and I couldn't work from home, we had a long, long list of people who would step in.
Shooter and Amelia were both home a lot since his jobs were of the extremely lucrative but also rare sort. Alex and Breaker also were happy to have her - and Jackson on school holidays - in their quiet lives. Then, of course, there was Kenzi and Tig, Reese and Cy, Gina, hell... even all the women in the girls club.
And, of course, Roman.
But as much as possible, we tried to have the largest part in our children's lives, even if it was tiring on the best of days.
We were doing it.
And well.
Better than I knew we would.
It was a scary thing, choosing to start a family.
Especially when you were a woman whose career was important to her, something you weren't willing to give up, and you knew that, for many women you knew who tried, it wasn't exactly possible to 'have it all,' that something always suffered. I was terrified that what would suffer would be my children.
I found, though, that it really all came down to how much you wanted it. I wanted it all enough to make it work. And there were days when work suffered because the kids needed me. And there were days when I had to have Paine do my part because work was nuts. But it all shook out.
"Come here," Paine demanded, voice low as he kicked out of his shoes, and moved to the top of the bed.
"I think you misheard me; I can't move."
There was a low, rumbling chuckle, a sound that still managed to shiver through my insides, even all these years later. "Alright," he said, sliding down the bed toward me, leaning down to look at me for a long moment. "I guess if you can't move, we can't do what I had in mind," he said, eyes wicked, making a wobble move through my belly - and lower - that reminded me that things had gotten so crazy that we hadn't had sex in, oh God, was it since Thanksgiving? That was just unaccep... no, wait, we'd had a quickie in the kitchen two weeks before when we messed up our schedules, and both made it home to meet Jackson's bus.
That wasn't too terrible.
But, I mean, no one wanted a 'not too terrible' sex life.
Or maybe some people did.
Maybe that was enough for them.
But, well, not for me and Paine.
Even through the baby stages that kept us perpetually exhausted and often covered in spit up somewhere, we always made time for intimacy at least once a week, making sure our relationship was still a priority.
"It's been too..." I started to say, only to get cut off when Paine was suddenly off the bed, on his feet, standing over me, that same glint still in his light eyes. Seeing my gaze on his, his lips curved up as his hands grabbed the waistband of my yoga pants and panties and yanked them down my legs which dragged me closer to the end of the bed. Where he wanted me.
His hands slid up my legs, sliding back to tease over my thighs before moving forward again, tracing the lines to my knees where his fingers sank in and pulled, spreading them apart, pressing my thighs down on the mattress, opening me up to him and his greedy mouth.
Suddenly, all the stress, all the crippling exhaustion that was the span between Thanksgiving and Christmas slipped away. The tension that had been coiled in my back, shoulders, and neck eased as my thigh muscles tensed, as my hands tightened, one on the sheets, the other on the back of Paine's neck, holding him to me. Not that I needed to. Paine wasn't one for playing around. When he went down on me, he did it with purpose, with the end game in mind.
His tongue traced my clit as his fingers moved between us, pulsing against the entrance to my body for a long moment, until my hips were rising up, begging for it. Then and only then did his fingers press inside, sinking deep with one thrust, then turning and curling to rake against my top wall, working my G-spot with practiced precision.
"Paine, I..."
I didn't get to finish.
The orgasm raked through my system violently, making me cry out loudly, too loudly, loudly enough to worry about the kids. You know, if I was capable of things like rational thought. Which I wasn't as I held my husband's head to me as he continued to devour me, drag it out, give me every last second of pleasure that he could.
Finished, he kissed my inner thigh, then across my lower belly, running his lips over marks that were still angry-looking, marks put there by two kids stretching too-tight skin, marks I had been incredibly insecure about, something that I found completely unsexy.
Until Paine seemed to pick up on the insecurity as he ran his fingers over them in bed one night. And asked me point-blank, as was his style, something I had always appreciated except when it put me in the hot seat.
"Unsexy?" he'd asked, brows drawn together as he looked down at them, then back at me, resting his hand flat against the newest ones put there by Willa who was bent on leaving her mark on the world - and her mama who once had very nice, unmarked skin. "These represent part of the life you gave me, Else. Nothing sexier in the world than what we got."
Sure, it made my belly - and heart - go all mushy, but it wasn't exactly a miracle cure. I still tried a bunch of creams on them and even priced the laser treatments.
I just never seemed to have that push to go through with it anymore.
"Paine," I called, running my hand up his short-cropped hair.
"Mmm?" he asked, tilting his head up, eyes still heavy.
"I'm not so tired anymore," I told him, scooting up on the bed more, the second wave of desire already unfurling in my core.
His smile was pure sin as he moved to kneel between my spread legs, reaching up behind his back to peel off his shirt, giving me a view that never ceased to make a bit of awe overtake me. All that beautiful, painted skin stretched over firm muscle.
His eyes stayed on my face as his hands drifted lower, working free his button and zip. My eyes, well, they had a mind of their own, watching with greedy anticipation as he moved off the bed, pulling down the waistbands of his pants and boxer briefs, letting his hard, straining cock free.
My walls tightened instinctively, anticipating the fullness, the delicious stretching invasion.
But first things are first.
My body folded up, my legs hanging over the end of the bed, my feet hitting the floor, putting me perfectly level as my hands slid behind, grabbing his ass, dragging him closer. One hand stayed there, sinking into the firm muscle. The other grabbed his cock at the base, holding tightly as my tongue moved over the head, licking up the bead of precum there, then stroking as I sucked him in, worked him until his hands were buried in my hair, yanking hard - too hard - as he started to lose control.
And out of control Paine was exactly what I got when his hand curled and yanked back violently, making his cock leave my mouth.
His hands moved down, grabbing my hips, yanking me onto my feet. He grabbed at my shirt, ripping it upward so hard I heard the tearing of fabric before he tossed it aside, reaching next for my bra, getting rid of that as well, then turning me, and pressing me down toward the bed on all fours.
One hand stayed on my hip, fingers sinking in hard to my hipbone as he took his cock in his other hand and stroked it up between my lips, tapping it against my clit for a long moment, until my walls felt painfully tight. Then he slid down and slammed inside me. Hard. Deep. Taking every inch of me as his own.
"Fuck yeah," he growled as he settled deep, staying still for a minute as his hand tracked up my spine, then sank into my hair at the base of my skull, curling it around his wide hand and pulling back just to the point of perfect pain.
"Paine, please," I begged, shamelessly shoving my ass back into him, needing the motion, the release.
That was all he needed, the snip that broke the thin thread of control he was keeping over himself.
His hand yanked harder as he started to fuck me.
Hard.
Rough.
Each thrust would have sent me flying up the bed if he didn't have me by the hair and hip, fingers digging in.
"Work your clit for me, baby girl," he demanded, voice rough, getting close.
My hand slid between my thighs, working my clit as his cock kept slamming deep, so deep it pinched deliciously each time, making my walls tighten around him as my body got closer.
"That's it, squeeze my cock, Else," he growled, his hand using my hip to slam me back against him so he could get deeper. My moans became desperate gasps as I got closer, my one hand grabbing so hard at the sheets I could have torn them. "You gonna come around my cock?" he asked, expecting an answer.
"Yes," I whimpered, my hand giving up on my clit as I felt myself pushed to the edge, knowing as soon as he thrust forward again, I was going to crash down into the orgasm.
Barely a second later, I did, the world seeming to go white as I did. His hand released my hair, leaving me to fall forward onto the mattress as his now free hand slapped down on my ass, making my thighs clench and my hips buck up as another wave rushed through me.
I was completely and utterly spent when he buried deep and came with my name on his lips, something that still made my belly go liquid, no matter how many times it happened.
He collapsed down on the bed behind me, reaching to pull me onto my side so he could wrap me up.
His hands moved lazily over me, tracing my neck, clavicle, breasts, belly, hip, thigh. Over and over as our bodies came back down from the high.
"Gotta get up, baby girl," he told me in that deep rumble of his, dragging me back from the cusp of sleep I so desperately needed.
"Can't," I grumbled, shaking my head, feeling his chin move across the top of my head at the motion.
"Gotta get a shirt and panties on," he reminded me, annoyingly rational.
I knew exactly what happened when I fell asleep naked.
One of the kids came barreling in.
It had happened one time too many. And while Willa was still rather clueless about the whole thing, Jackson was getting too big to walk in on that kinda thing.
"Ugh," I growled as I pulled away from him, forcing my lazy limbs to carry me to the bathroom where I cleaned up and slipped into one of Paine's tees. When I came out to grab panties, Paine was already in pants and a tee, waiting for me under the covers.
"It's the home stretch," he reminded me as I moved in to curl into his chest, doing so with my full weight, not caring about crushing into him. His hand moved up and down my spine, something that never failed to calm me to sleep almost immediately.
"Mhmm," I agreed, slowly drifting off to sleep.
We didn't get the four hours - losing one because of the sexy times, something I was okay with giving up for those orgasms - we had thought we would get.
Because the children, still thinking it was Santa putting in all the legwork, not their poor, sleep-deprived parents, came barreling in at four a.m., jumping on the bed.
I shocked awake with a whimper at losing the lovely oblivion of sleep.
"Mama!" Willa squeaked, making me turn my head from Paine's chest to find her in her floor-length flannel nightgown, her pretty in-between brown and blonde hair around her shoulders, somewhere between wavy and curly, Willa's features seeming to take on the indecisive characteristics of her personality. Four years old and far, far too pretty and smart for her poor parents' good.
Beside her, Jackson was in matching plaid pants and top, his eyes so wide that I wondered if he had slept at all, or just pretended to be when I checked on him. Somehow, I didn't even care. He was eight. I knew we didn't have a lot of Santa years left with him, if any, so I was happy he was so excited.
He was turning into his daddy. There was no denying it. He was tall and wide-shouldered for his age with feet that refused to stop growing. His skin was just slightly - ever so slightly - lighter than his father's. He had the same beautiful green eyes and perfect bone structure that I knew would cut and chisel when he was a teen, breaking hearts from here to the moon.
Where Willa seemed to get a lot of the women in her life in her - namely, Kenzi and Alex, with all their snark and sass and confidence, even at her young age, something I loved, knowing my little girl was going to grow up strong and sure of herself - Jackson was a perfect combination of the men in his. He had Paine's creativity, Enzo's quiet confidence, Roman's head for grand ideas, Shooter's charm, Breaker's sarcasm, Tig's sweetness, and Cyrus's playful, boyish nature.
We had such an amazing, supportive family. It hit me at times like this, looking at our kids, at who they would become because of the people we surrounded them with, people I would never have known if not for Paine. An unconventional family, sure, but so full of love and loyalty that it could make your heart feel like it was so full it might burst through your chest at times. I had never known anything even remotely like it in my private life.
My sister never resurfaced after everything went down. My father remarried and moved upstate. We would see him for a small gift exchange sometime between Christmas and New Years when he had free time. He had truly tried - and mostly succeeded - at being a better grandfather than he had been a father to me, though he was still who he was, the kind of man who thought money was always the answer.
"They will never want for anything in life," he had told us when he sat Paine and myself down to show us his will where he had given a third to his wife as was stipulated by their prenup, and the rest to our kids.
He hadn't understood it when I insisted I wanted them to have to work for what they got, like I had mostly done. Sure, it was nice to have an easy life with all the money you wanted, but that didn't build character; it didn't allow you to appreciate the lessons learned in some struggles.
In the end, it had actually been Paine to talk me into accepting it. Just on different terms. They could use whatever portion they needed for college - if he had passed by then - but then they would not get the actual lump sum of money until they turned thirty, when hopefully they had needed to get their own lives on track first.
"Rome and I talked about it," he added, making my heart do a little squeeze. They hadn't had the easiest time learning to love and trust and lean on each other, but over the years, Roman had become as close a confidant to Paine as he had always been for me. "He was saying he thinks that after they have had a good education, and some life experience, that getting that money might allow them to do big, great things with their lives before they got too old and jaded to stop thinking crazy, innovative thoughts."
So, my kids had an obscene amount of money coming to them one day, with the hopes that they did something good with it. And, with the cast of characters we surrounded them with, all from different walks of life, different - but equally good - outlooks, I was pretty confident they would do exactly what Roman predicted.
"Can we go check to see if Santa came?" Jackson asked, trying to hide just how excited he was in case I told him no, that they had to go back to sleep for a bit longer.
And as much as a bit longer of sleep did sound good, watching Christmas through their eyes was a hell of a lot more tempting.
"I think we could see," I said, nodding. "I mean, it's early still, buddy," I added, making my voice hesitant, wanting to keep at least a shred of doubt there so as not to ruin the surprise.
"They do stockings; I'll make coffee. Then we can watch them tear in," Paine whispered in my ear as he kissed my temple.
Have I mentioned how much I love my husband?
Then, ten minutes later, coffee in hands as we cuddled on the couch, we watched Christmas through our kids' eyes.
"All 'cause of you," he told me as Willa tore at a present like a wild animal, all claws. "Running that pretty ass down the street with trouble on your heels. Best fucking night of my life."
Truer words had never been spoken.
"Best night of mine too," I agreed, cuddling in closer, planting a kiss into his neck.
Every single one since then had just been whipped cream on top.