We talk about our childhoods—me living on the road with my mom, being homeschooled until seventh grade, when we finally settled down here. How my mom got sick and spent ten years battling her body until she lost the fight.
Savage tells me about the army. What he loved about it. What he hated. How he learned to fight and to kill, and how something inside him hated that he already knew so much about taking a life from living in a home that felt like death every day.
When he opened up to me, I could tell it was the first time he was really processing how terrifying andmiserable his childhood was. Yes, he blames his mother on some level for not leaving.. But he also still blames himself for existing, for being the object of his father’s endless abuse.
We cooked dinners together, took Aurora on walks, and slept curled together like perfectly nested spoons.
We’re walking Aurora one day at a park near the condo when Savage takes my hand. “She’s gotta call me something,” he says. “I can’t have her saying ‘Uncle Tank’ before she says my name.”
I nod, not sure where he’s going with this. The afternoon is beautiful, the sun shining. The grass looks impossibly green, and when we stop at the park, Aurora—who is now crawling at Formula 1 speeds—face-plants immediately and then looks back at us before bursting into tears. We both drop to our knees and soothe her, then Savage picks her up and pushes her in the baby swing beside a mom who is giving him a healthy eye-fucking.
I can’t blame her. He’s gorgeous. He exudes power. And right now, he’s sleeping in my bed, recovering like a man healing from his inner wounds, just like he healed from his physical wounds only a few weeks ago. I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t wait until he made a decision about what we are to each other.
I’ve been letting him take the lead, and the question about what Aurora should call him feels like he’s leading me someplace.
“Uncle Savage sounds a little too Addams Family,” I laugh.
He shakes his head, and I watch the care he takes to push Aurora gently but firmly enough that she giggles with every surge the swing makes higher and higher. “Tank’s an uncle. Phantom’s an uncle. I don’t know what I am to her.”
I don’t throw out any possibilities. He’s a smart man. Aurora will never remember the few months she had with Anthony. I don’t know that any man needs to be that father figure in name. The role he plays will be what matters. “Did you have any ideas?” I ask, knowing full well he probably figured it all out before he brought the question up.
“Everything I’ve thought of is a mouthful. It might take her a while to learn it,” he hedges.
“Okay,” I say. “Like what?”
He cocks his chin at me and lowers his eyes. “I was thinking Papa Ethan or Papa E. Something short, catchy. Special. Just for her.”
Tears immediately spring to my eyes. This isn’t anything I’d expected. Maybe Ethan or Sav, a shorter version of Savage. But Papa something?
“E will be a lot easier to say than Tank,” I tease.
“Part of my thinking,” he teases back, nodding.
When Aurora starts getting fussy, we take her home and put her down for a nap. I head into the kitchen to pour us something cold to drink when I feel Savage behind me. His cock is hard, and he rubs his hips against my rear end.
“What about you, Claire?” he asks, lowering his lips to my hair. “What do you want to call me?”
I turn around so I’m facing him, our hips pressed together. My back is against the counter, and I reach up to wrap my arms around his neck. “I have another E word for you,” I murmur, lifting up on my toes to kiss his lips. “You’re my salvation, my hero, my best friend, my biker, my lover. You’re myeverything.”
He kisses me lightly, anchoring his muscular hands to my waist and picking me up off the floor. I wrap my legs around him as he walks us toward the living room. Aurora’s bedroom door is shut, and the noise machine and monitor are on. He takes one look at it and sets me on the couch. Then he points. “Where are we going with this?”
I feel like the question echoes on so many levels. Where are we going with this relationship. This afternoon. This thing between us that feels hardly acknowledged but getting bigger by the day.
“As long as you’re going to fuck me senseless, I’ll go wherever you are,” I tell him.
He growls and I giggle, and then I turn around and face my front toward the back of the couch. Savage gets behind me and tugs the waistband of my shorts past my rear end, tossing my panties with them.
He leaves on my top and bra, and I hear him unzip his jeans and shimmy them down.
He reaches between my legs, and his long, thick fingers part my curls. He leans close to me and murmurs in my ear. “Claire, I want to go where you are. Where your baby girl is. I want to be a part of all of this, even if I don’t know how.”
I nod and bend forward, pivoting my hips and ass toward him. “Savage,” I pant, my core growing hot at the promise of him inside me. “I need you. I want you every way I can get you.”
He pulls his hand from my slick pussy and lines up his hips behind me. I grab the back of the couch for balance as I feel him slide the head of his cock between my legs. He strokes my pussy, wetting every single inch of me before touching my clit with his shaft.
Electric currents of pleasure ricochet through my body and weaken my legs. I grip the back of the couch with all my strength and stretch my back toward him, desperately craving that fullness, that thrust from him that will send every nerve ending into pure bliss.
But he teases me, stroking and sliding in just the tip, wetting his dick, stroking my clit with his shaft, and working my poor pussy into a desperate, needy frenzy. My nipples harden inside my bra, and the friction of my flesh against the fabric has me risking touching myself. I don’t want to smash my face on the couch, but I need more, so much more.