“Birthday’s weren’t really a thing for me, growing up. They happened. I mean, I got older each year. But…” I searched my brain for any positive birthday memories and found one featuring Perfect Mom. “Once, I had a foster mom who threw me this really elaborate party. She made me a cake. Decorated my bedroom door with balloons and crepe paper, then invited people from school over. I was like six or seven.”
And not one month later, she decided she didn’t want to be my mom anymore. For a long time, I wondered if I did something at that party to embarrass her. I’ve since decided she was one of those people who push too hard to be the best at everything. She just couldn’t be the best at yoga and work and whatever else she was into—and being my mom, too.
Kennedy put down her fork. “What about after that?”
“Birthdays really weren’t a big deal.” That was all I wanted to say about that.
My past sucked. My present didn’t. Why bring it all back up again?
“When is yours?” she asked.
“Do I get to ask questions?”
“In a minute.”
She looked so cute, how could I let her down? “It’s a month from today, actually. September fifteenth.”
Kennedy’s eyes lit up as she polished off the last of her coffee, then pushed off her stool. “Stand up for me.”
Her command earned another strange look. “You’re weird in the morning.”
“Says the guy who compared his brain to a Scottish moor.”
As there was no fighting her logic, I complied with her request, tantalized by the look in her eyes.
She sank to her knees in front of me, shaking her head as she pried at the button at my waist. “He even wears jeans in the morning.”
With a giggle, she slipped my pants down and freed my enthusiastic dick from his denim prison, then slowly, deliberately, drew her tongue along the shaft and circled the crown. I fucking shivered from head to toe as I met her gaze, then lust burned that shit away as she wrapped those lips around my cock and sucked.
It was weeks of fantasy coming to fruition and reality blew my daydreams to smithereens. I gripped the counter. Ogled her bobbing head, those copper locks streaming over her shoulders, and stored the image in the old memory banks for future use.
The smell of bacon would never remind me of Perfect Mom ever again. It would always be Her Royal Majesty Penny fucking Dreadful on her knees in front of me on a Wednesday morning. I grabbed a fistful of that gorgeous hair. My balls clenched. She cupped them, slowly swirled her fingers around them, and I came with a force that threatened to drop me to the ground beside her.
She swallowed, drawing the back of her hand across those lips and I lifted my hands in the air, turning my face to the ceiling. “A-fucking-men!”
A blast of laughter escaped her as she stood. “Did you really just bless your orgasm?”
I drew her to me. “I did, and if you could see the way you looked, and feel the way you felt, you wouldn’t be so judgey.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but a jangling alarm sounded from her purse on the floor near the door. Her eyes went wide. “Oh no! I am so gonna be late for work. I still need to shower and change.”
She shoved a few more bites of breakfast into her mouth and took a swig of my coffee with a grimace—presumably because she could actually taste coffee. Grabbing her shoes and her purse, she rushed toward the door, then paused, turning to me.
A smile lifted her lips and her eyes skated across my face. Unable to stop myself, I strode across the floor, drew her into my arms, and kissed her, inhaling the scent of lilacs like I could download her into my brain and not have to spend the entire day without her.
Her hands came to my face, scraping against the stubble I desperately needed to shave. “I’ll see you when I get home?”
“You better.”
Slowly, sadly, she withdrew from my arms, then pulled open the front door, stopping abruptly when she came face to face with Maxine, enjoying her coffee just like I’d envisioned she would when I redid the backyard.
With her shoes clutched in her arms and the strap from yesterday’s dress slipping off her shoulder, Kennedy burst into laughter. “Don’t say a thing,” she said to her grandma.