Brent
Much later at night, when Brent returned to his home, he didn’t bother turning any of the lights on. The whole house was draped in thick darkness, but he’d lived here long enough that he could make his way around in the shadows without bumping into anything. After tossing back a half-dozen drinks with the rest of the senior members of his MC, his bladder was filling up fast, and he was so drunk that he didn’t realize he had to go until his belly was already aching with the effort of holding it in as he ran up the stairs.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” he muttered to himself as he dashed into the nearest bathroom on the second level, which weirdly had the light on. He figured he must have left it on after taking his shower earlier in the afternoon.
By the time he reached the toilet and yanked the seat up so he could pee freely, his heart had started pounding in his ears, rendering him incapable of hearing anything else other than the insistent pulse of his own blood rushing inside of him. “Ahhh,” he hissed to himself in relief as he finally emptied his bladder. He had almost finished peeing by the time he heard it. Water running. Oh, shit.
Brent slowly turned his head to the side to see a naked woman in the shower, humming softly as she washed her hair, totally oblivious to Brent’s presence.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He honestly hadn’t noticed Kira was in the shower when he barged in to pee, but there was no way he could believably sell that story and expect her to buy it as the truth.
Stop panicking, he told himself. You can do this. Just slip out before she notices you.
Brent exhaled slowly, putting his penis back in his pants and zipping up. He was just about to make an escape out into the second floor hallway when he realized he had another problem: his pee in the toilet. He couldn’t flush without alerting Kira to his presence, and if he didn’t flush she might figure out that he’d been there anyway.
Fuck it, he decided, rushing out of the bathroom as quickly as he could. Hopefully she’d walk out of the bathroom without noticing anything, or else she’d just assume that one of the boys used the bathroom without flushing.
Brent didn’t stop running until he was safely in his bedroom, collapsed on his bed. “Jesus fuck,” he breathed out into the chilly air around him. Adrenaline was still pumping through his veins, making him feel a little woozy and light-headed even though he was just lying flat on his back. She didn’t see me. She didn’t see me. Everything’s fine. She didn’t see me, he tried to reassure himself.
Lying there in the quiet, he finally let himself relax, the tension in his body fading away gradually as he let his eyes fall closed. But he didn’t slip off into sleep. Instead, images flashed behind his eyelids, keeping him alert even as his heart rate gradually slowed. Images flashed in his brain of a naked, wet, curvy body moving behind the glass of the shower door.
“Oh, fuck,” Brent whispered, looking down at his own crotch to discover that he was fully hard just from picturing what he’d just seen in the bathroom a few minutes earlier.
His tongue went dry in his mouth, feeling like sandpaper as he tried to clear his throat and get a handle on the dirty, awful thoughts flittering through his brain. He knew it was sick, but god damn it, her ass just looked so plump and juicy, the outline of her breasts so enticing, her legs so lithe. He kept replaying the images over and over and over again, picking up on new details to salivate over. Jesus, he felt like such a creepy loser, getting hard after walking in on a girl in the shower. Was he twelve?
He clamped his eyes shut and tried to focus on the blackness of his own mind, clearing out all thoughts that were getting between him and sleep. But no matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t get his dick to go soft. His heart was pulsing in his cock, which pressed against the fabric of his jeans as if it was trying to escape.
Brent blew out his breath and frustration and wiggled out of his jeans, hoping that the cold air of the room around him would do the trick. But no dice. His hard-on was determined, and it wasn’t going anywhere.
He reached down and stuck his hand in his boxers, wrapping a loose fist around his erection and pumping it a few times just to give himself some relief from the heavy ache in his balls. The next second, he heard a door slam shut and footsteps go down the hallway. Every muscle in Brent’s body tensed up as he strained his ears, listening for a sign of what Kira might be doing. Did she notice he’d used the toilet? Did she know it was him? Was she coming here right now to call him out?
For some reason, that last thought made his dick twitch a little bit in his hands, a tiny drop of pre-ejaculate dripping over the side of his cock and landing on one of his fingers as he squeezed himself a little tighter. He let his eyes roll into the back of his head and moved his hand in long, drawn-out motions while his mind went wild with images.
“Dreaming about me, are you?” Kira’s voice echoed in his head. He imagined that she was standing there at the edge of his bed, maybe dressed in a sexy negligee or in a bra and panties, her cleavage practically leaping out of her clothes while she moved her hips from side to side. God damn it, she’s so fucking hot, Brent thought, swallowing hard as he reminded himself that Kira wasn’t really there. This was all in his head. But by fuck it was too tempting to ignore, even if it wasn’t real.
“You’re a bad boy, Mr. Barkley,” his imagined version of Kira crooned lightly, climbing up onto the bed next to him and throwing a slim leg over one of his. “I saw what you did.”
“You saw me staring at you?” Brent whispered out loud to himself, sweat beginning to bead at the base of his neck as he moved his hand faster over his cock. He shut his eyes tight as he pictured Kira smiling mischievously at him.
“Of course,” the imaginary Kira said in his head. “I was shocked, really. Nobody’s ever walked in on me like that before. But…”
“But?” Brent prompted her, even though he already knew what he wanted her to say.
“I didn’t stop you,” Kira whispered. “I wanted it. I want it so bad.”
Brent imagined that Kira would then slide her hand under his shirt, maybe play with his nipples a little bit, just to tease him and get him even harder than he already was. Then, she’d push her hand down into his boxers, pull his own hand off his dick so she could take over. Her fingers would be long and warm, Brent imagined, her skin impossibly soft to the touch. She would stroke him teasingly at first, making his skin tingle with an almost tickling sensation. His hips jerked up in the air, further into his own fist as tried to listen even harder, hearing the distant sound of a floorboard squeak under Kira’s foot somewhere at the other end of the hall, where she’d presumably chosen one of the smaller bedrooms to live in.
“You’re so bad,” Brent’s vision of Kira whispered into his ear, making his hairs stand up on edge, prickling with overwhelming sensation as he imagined Kira leaning down to take him into her mouth. God, it’d be so sweet to fuck that mouth, to force himself down her throat, to have her smile up at him with just her beautiful twinkling eyes, to utterly lose control inside her body. Brent moved his fist faster over his cock, using his own pre-ejaculate as lubrication as he went harder and harder, fucking his hips up into his hand and down onto the mattress, until his bed was squeaking a little bit and he pictured himself coming on Kira’s bright pink tongue.
“Fuck!” he cried out, a little too loudly, just as he exploded over his own hand. Shit. He should have prepared better and gotten some tissues ahead of time so he wouldn’t have to deal with this mess. But, oh well. It was a hell of an orgasm, maybe his best one ever not involving the touch of another person.
Carefully, so as not to soil his bed sheets, Brent got to his feet, reaching over to the bedside table for a box of tissues to clean up. Immediately afterwards, he fell back onto the bed, cradling the extra pillow he kept around just so he had something to hold onto.
“I’m such an idiot,” he whispered to himself as soon as the lovely warmth of his orgasm fully receded from his body, leaving him feeling cold and alone. It was pathetic, jacking off to the nanny he barely knew and didn’t even really like that much. She was mouthy and honestly a little full of herself, preaching to him like she was superior when really she didn’t even have her own life together. What was there to like? Other than her sexy body, of course, which she’d managed to hide from him under unflattering clothing two days in a row. Somehow Brent felt disturbingly certain that this wouldn’t be the last time he pictured Kira to get himself off. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other options. That was the annoying thing. There were plenty of girls who hung around the Soul Catchers clubhouse, hanging onto his every word, looking at him like he was the son of God himself, but none of them really caught his attention, even in a purely physical sense. Besides, between his job and the MC, he didn’t have the energy to devote to a woman. It was tempting for Brent to feel like this could be a convenient way for him to let off steam, using Kira to get off without ever actually having sex with her, but his inner moral compass shouted that lustful part of himself down. You can’t just go around leering at your employee so you can get off on it later. It’s creepy and gross. You can’t do it ever again, he told himself.
He needed to stop, right now. That much was obvious. He had to cut it off before it could grow into anything more than a passing fantasy. He couldn’t allow himself to think of his son’s nanny as a potential fuck toy. There was too much potential danger there, too many uncontrollable variables, for him to even think about it.
Brent had just about convinced himself, for the time being anyway, that he was capable of looking at his nanny in a non-sexual light when he heard a sudden crashing noise from down the hall. He bolted upright in bed immediately, swinging his legs over the side and breaking into a run out into the hallway. “What’s wrong?” he half-shouted, flicking on the nearest light to reveal Dylan on the floor in the center of the hallway, holding his ankle. “What are you doing up?” Brent asked, slowly approaching his son and kneeling down to see if he was hurt.
“I just—it’s nothing, nothing. Sorry,” Dylan said before staggering to his feet, beginning to limp towards the bathroom.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Brent said, but he made no move to follow his small son, even though the little guy looked like he was in pain. He must have tripped over one of the side tables against the wall in the hallway, but what was he doing awake at this hour in the first place?
“What’s going on?” Kira asked, throwing the door of her bedroom open. She walked out into the hallway with a bathrobe on and a towel wrapped around her head.
“I’m honestly not sure,” Brent said, inwardly commanding his heart to calm down. It had started pounding against his chest in response to Kira’s appearance. He could see a significant stretch of skin underneath the bathrobe, revealing her long, firm-looking legs. How I’d love to reach out and touch those fucking legs, Brent thought before he cut himself off, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from Kira’s lovely body.
“Dylan? Honey?” Kira said. She walked over to the bathroom and knelt down on the ground. Dylan had just closed the door and clicked the lock into place, but Brent couldn’t hear him peeing or doing anything else to suggest he was going to the bathroom. “Honey, are you okay? Talk to me,” Kira said, looking up at Brent with wide, worried eyes. “Did he say anything to you?” she asked in a hushed tone of voice.
Brent shook his head. “No, I asked him what he was doing up, but he didn’t say anything,” Brent whispered back.
Kira frowned and pulled the towel off of her head, letting her damp hair drop around her shoulders. She knocked lightly on the bathroom door again, calling out, “Dylan, sweetie. Are you sick? Do you need help, honey?”
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Dylan called out a moment later. But Brent could make out the sound of his breathing now, heavy and ragged.
Kira looked up at Brent again, her eyes flashing with concern. She mouthed up at Brent: “He’s crying.”
Brent nodded slowly, walking up to the bathroom door and pressing his ear against the wood in the hopes of making out some of the noises more clearly. After a few seconds of listening, it became obvious that the little boy was crying, whining a little under his breath as he sniffled several times in quick succession. Brent backed away from the door after hearing a particularly sad choked-off sob, looking to Kira helplessly.
Kira furrowed her brow. She rubbed at her wet hair with the towel before getting to her feet and then secured the bathrobe more tightly with the sash around her waist. “Okay, I got this,” she said softly, probably speaking more to herself than to Brent. “Honey? Dylan? I’m going to come in, okay?”
“No, please! I—please don’t!” Dylan cried from the other side of the door, inhaling shakily, probably trying to stop himself from crying even harder.
Kira paused at the door, tapping her fingernails against the wood for a few seconds before speaking again. “Honey, I’m going to give you thirty seconds, okay, and then I’m going to come in and talk to you. All right?” She paused, waiting for Dylan to respond, but he didn’t say anything. After the allotted time passed, Kira reached into her pocket, pulled out the keychain that Brent had given her that morning, immediately found the right key, and used it to open up the door.
Brent moved to follow Kira through the door, but she stopped him with a hand in the air. “Wait. I think I should go in alone,” Kira said in a low volume.
“Why?” Brent asked reflexively, but then when Kira sighed and frowned, clearly reluctant to explain her reasoning, Brent just nodded. “Okay, okay, you can go in. I’ll just wait out here.”
Kira smiled sweetly. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll try to be quick about it.” She stepped through the door and shut it behind her before Brent could even get a look at Dylan.
Brent knew he should have just gone to bed straight away. There was no way he could contribute or help the kid calm down. Brent was talented at many things, but coddling little children wasn’t one of them. Still, though, his curiosity got the better of him, and he pressed his ear back to the bathroom door, straining to discern what was being said inside the bathroom. Finally, he was able to ignore whatever extraneous background noise was distracting him and focus in on Kira’s voice as she said, “Do you want to tell me what happened to upset you, sweetheart?”
“N-nothing,” Dylan said before sniffling loudly.
Kira was quiet for a long moment, and Brent was a little worried that she was about to turn back around and leave Dylan alone in the bathroom, but eventually she broke the silence again, saying, “You know, sometimes I get sad, too.”
“Why?” Dylan asked in a small, sad voice, so softly that Brent had to strain his ears hard to pick up on the word.
“Lots of reasons,” Kira said. “Mostly because people I love aren’t around me as often as I’d like. I used to be sad when I had to work in an office and leave Lucian to a babysitter. That was hard.”
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said.
Kira laughed lightly. “No, no, it’s okay. Everything is fine now.”
There was a pause where neither of them spoke, and then Dylan said in a barely audible tone, “I’m still sad, though.”
“Why are you sad, honey?” Kira asked.
“I don’t know where Mommy is,” Dylan said, sniffling again like he was fighting back tears.
“I know, honey. I know. That’s so hard. I wish you didn’t have to deal with that,” Kira said.
Dylan just continued to sniffle a little.
“You know, you can cry if you want,” Kira said. “I’m not going to make you cry if you don’t want to, but there’s nothing shameful about it. You can cry, sweetheart.”
“Boys don’t cry,” Dylan said, his voice wobbling a little bit. “That’s what Mommy always said. I can’t cry.”
“Can I let you in on a little secret?” Kira said, dropping her voice a little bit so that Brent had to listen harder to make out what she was saying. “Everybody cries. Everybody. Anybody who’s said they’ve never cried is a liar.”
“Really?” Dylan asked.
“Really,” Kira said confidently. “So don’t worry about it. You don’t have to run to your bathroom to cry. You can cry in front of me and your daddy if you want.”
“He’s not my daddy,” Dylan replied stiffly.
“Right. I’m sorry. Me and Mr. Barkley. Brent. You should call him Brent if you want,” Kira said. “You can cry in front of us if something is wrong, and we’ll try to help you feel better.”
Dylan sniffled a few times, probably considering her suggestion for a long moment before he finally spoke again. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure,” Kira said.
“I have bad dreams. All the time,” Dylan said in a hushed whisper. “Mommy said to stop talking about it, so don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.”
“What happens in your bad dreams?” Kira asked.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” Dylan replied. It was clear from the awkward, stilted way he spoke that he was lying, but Kira didn’t push the issue.
“Okay, honey. You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry about your dreams, though. You can always come to me if something scares you in the middle of the night. Do you know where my room is?”
“Yes,” Dylan said in between sniffles.
“All right. Well, I’ll leave you alone. You can always come to me, though. Remember that,” Kira said. Brent immediately backed away from the bathroom door, not wanting either of them to realize he’d been listening in the whole time.
Kira stepped out the next minute, frowning deeply.
“Well?” Brent asked, leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom door.
Kira grabbed him by the elbow and led him down the hall to an empty room, waiting until they were safely inside with the door closed before turning to him and hissing under her breath, “He’s having nightmares.”
“And?” Brent asked, confused as to why Kira’s tone seemed so urgent. Nightmares weren’t a big deal, right?
“Well, I’m pretty sure his mom leaving him is really messing with his head,” Kira said in a rough whisper. In the darkness of the empty bedroom, she was a shadow among other shadows, but if Brent squinted a little he could make out the fire in her eyes, the passion that seemed to simmer underneath her skin. “I don’t think he would have told me about the nightmares unless they were happening a lot, or unless they were really bad. I think it’s a problem, Mr. Barkley.”
Brent was a little weirded out by constantly being addressed by his last name. Even his patients called him by his first name. But he chose not to say anything about it. He would feel strange forcing Kira to use his first name unless she felt comfortable doing so. “How do you know that it’s a recurring problem, though?” he asked. “He could just be complaining about one nightmare.”
Brent saw Kira shake her head in the darkness. “No, he’s not like that,” she argued.
“How would you know?” Brent asked. “You only met him yesterday.”
He could tell even by Kira’s long silence that he’d fucked up somehow by saying that, even though he’d only pointed out the truth. Kira finally sighed and backed further away from him, turning around and walking to the bed in the center of the room to sit. “All right, well, I guess you can keep that in mind, but if you want my opinion, just speaking as a mother, I’d look into getting him some help.”
“Help? Like psychological help?” Brent asked.
“Yeah, like a child counselor or something, I don’t know,” Kira said with a sigh. “He just seemed…really upset. And scared. His mother has taught him not to come to you with his problems, and that’s a bad habit that you need to get him to break as soon as possible.” She paused again, and Brent saw her hang her head low between her shoulders, like the fight had seeped out of her. “If you care, anyway…” she muttered under her breath.
The words stung, but it wasn’t like they were untrue or anything. As far as Brent was concerned, Dylan wasn’t really his son, not in any way that counted. There was no room in Brent’s life for a child, not even one that seemed as smart and sensitive as Dylan.
“You made a mistake in there, you know,” Brent said.
“Oh well, I’m sure I made more than one,” Kira said, tugging at her hair again with the towel even though by now it had to be mostly dry. “Which one are you referring to, though?”
“You promised him you’d always be there for him,” Brent said. “That’s not true, is it?”
Kira got to her feet then and crossed the room again, stopping mere inches away from Brent’s face. He was keenly aware of her body, how her chest heaved up and down with her breathing, bringing her just a little bit closer to touching him on every exhale. He realized he could still feel the aftershocks of his orgasm from earlier, the way pleasure had rocketed through his every cell just thinking about Kira’s beautiful naked body.
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Kira asked, her soft tone contrasting sharply with the visible tension in her shoulders and arms.
“He’s not staying here for good,” Brent said firmly. “I mean it. One way or another, he’s going to be out of this house in a year.”
“Well, maybe I’ll follow him,” Kira said defiantly, glaring up at him in the darkness for a second before stepping around him to get to the door of the bedroom. “He’s got to have one stable figure in his life, at least.”
She slammed the door hard behind her, leaving in Brent alone in the bedroom with his thoughts.
She was right. Dylan deserved better than him. He deserved to have someone like her. So no matter how awkward it became, how excruciating it might be to have Kira around and never touch her, Brent was going to make sure she didn’t leave. For Dylan’s sake.