In The Family

Chapter Six

Jed would not admit to enjoying this. It was a purely juvenile tactic to get through to Toby, nothing more. Truly. Still he licked the edges of his dripping ice cream cone eagerly catching every drop of the pistachio confection before it wasted uselessly onto the concrete steps. The only one more excited than he seemed to be Toby who scarfed down his until only the cone remained when he had to pause with a brain freeze. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and held his breath until it passed.

Jed chuckled at his son’s misfortune before being stunned into near paralysis by the same. They both shook it off and shivered. Damn, that was cold.

“Okay, ice cream’s done. None of that,” he coughed harshly. “Damn.”

“Aww! You said a bad word, Unca Jed.” He waved a firm finger in his father’s face disapprovingly.

“I know, I’m sorry. No more bad words.”

“Swear?”

Jed held up his hand solemnly. “I do.” They sealed their agreement with a nod. Deal. That was the one deal Jed had no intention of going back on. He watched Toby eye Jed’s dessert contemplatively and then look back at his own. He seemed to be weighing his options. What those options were, his father had no idea. Then, like a flash, his cone tipped forward and the ice cream scoop was on the ground. Suddenly, it all became clear as Toby pulled an unhappy pout onto his face.

He held it out to him, surrendering before he became too much more attached. “You can have mine.” Toby smiled shyly, but took it nonetheless.

“Thank you, Unca Jed.” He had been so totally played. But, seeing the momentary happiness on his son’s face was enough for him to let it slide. However, next time he would not be so easy to fool. Really, he wouldn’t be.

He sighed as he rose from the steps, rubbing his aching back. He’d known better than to get down here with him, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Not unlike several other things he’d done in life. They were all good ideas at the time. At least, they seemed like they were.

He observed Toby getting stickier and stickier until he could honestly stand it no more. There was melted pistachio on his ear now. Yeah, this had to stop.

He walked up behind him and lifted him up under his arms. “Come on, little guy. Looks like we’re gonna need a bath. We have to hurry up before Auntie Abbey gets back and sees the mess we made of her clean porch.” Toby managed to look terrified for a moment before realizing his guardian’s playful tone. The millisecond he’d spent tensed in Jed’s arm had signaled to him his faux pas. He held him closer despite his stickiness and kissed his hair. “Hey, don’t worry, okay? She loves you and won’t mind the mess. I’ll clean it up later and she won’t have to know anything about. Will that be okay?” He nodded and squeezed his eyes shut against the oncoming barrage of memories that seemed unending.

Jed could feel him reliving it all over again and so he did as well; living through things he’d never seen, but that only existed in his worst nightmares. With his son, he relived his own abuse and it seemed laughable in the face of worse treatments. As far as he was concerned, he’d never been hurt at all.

“Are you okay, now?” There was a slightly sniffling noise, but little more. He took his silence as his answer. They headed back inside, leaving the cleanup to some unfortunate, but compliant agent. They knew nothing if not how to clean up a mess. It was spotless. So spotless, in fact, that Abbey would never have seen it had she not been watching from the balcony above. This served more to fuel her heartache than her anger. She wondered whether he’d ever be completely happy again, or whether he’d ever actually been happy at all. Either way, Abbey had her doubts.

A half hour met Abbey waiting in the Lincoln Bedroom for Jed to finish bathing Toby from their ice cream excursion. She had smiled upon closer inspection of her boys. Close contact between the two had covered the front of Jed’s sweatshirt in a sticky mixture of chocolate and pistachio. Now, the bath had covered his shirt in suds and bubble gum-scented water. That was what she had garnered from a peek into the Executive bathroom. It had taken the best of her restraint not to fall down laughing as Jed made tugboat sounds for Toby’s amusement. He was a natural father, an amazing man to know and be loved by.

Another ten minutes passed before they came out. Toby was swathed in a large fluffy towel, thrown over his father’s shoulder, warm and dry. Jed, on the other hand, was drenched and looked to be freezing. She could hardly contain a giggle at the adorable sight. Oh, she never had a camera when she needed one.

Toby examined his wrinkly fingers deeply. He looked like a raisin. He was so cute. “Hey, pumpkin.” He looked up at Abbey with a wide smile and waved. She waved back and blew a kiss. He caught it and pressed it to his cheek. The way they loved him went above and beyond all he’d ever known. He was a piece of their heart.

“I’m gonna take this little guy to get ready for bed,” he kissed his forehead. “Tell Abbey good night.”

“Night, Au’tie Abbey.” She smiled as they disappeared into the hall. She rested a hand on her chest and leaned back into the headboard. She never imagined that she’d be back to moments like these where she would end her day reminiscing over what sweet things her children had done that day. Zoey had been the last and it had been years since those things had not embarrassed her. But Toby and Lesly were different. She hadn’t seen them when they were small. They had missed the best of it, she thought. The little things.

But they had them now. She wanted to believe that was all that mattered, but the haunting specter of Sienna’s visit lingered on. She swore she saw that man in her sleep and the things she dreamed of were horrible. Some were things he’d done and some were things she’d do. Nights were frightening now.

She was deep in thought when Jed came back in, already removing him soaked clothes. He stopped when he saw her pensive expression. “Honey, are you okay?” She jumped, having not realized he’d come back.

“Hmm? What?”

“Are you okay? You look a little under it?” She shrugged. He started to sit down on the bed, but she smacked his butt. “Oh, no. Keep your wet self off my dry bed.”

“Aww, Abbey.” She was adamant.

“Nope. Clothes off and then, you can get into bed with me.” He rolled his eyes and stalked away. A few minutes later, he came back dressed in an actual pair of pajamas. It just so happened that it was the pair she preferred. “Now, you can get in with me.” He stood before her defiantly. “Are you getting in?”

“Maybe I don’t want to now. I’m feeling pretty put off.”

“Fine.” She shrugged and picked up her book and glasses off the bedside table, returning to her reading from earlier in the evening.

He exhaled unhappily before getting into bed against his own wishes. But to his own defense, it was freezing and he’d be damned if he’d catch his death of pneumonia on principle. He picked up his own book and glasses and the let Abbey’s will be done for the time being. If she didn’t want to talk, they wouldn’t talk then.

An hour passed and Jed felt the day catching up with him. He was dying to talk to Abbey. He had to share his fear with someone and who better than her?

“Abbey?” She looked up from her book distractedly. When she saw his face, she marked her page with the blue silk ribbon and shut it, laying it aside for another, less serious time.

“What is it?” He settled down uneasily. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, because God forbid Abbey should be angrier than she already was, but he was anxious to have someone tell him that he was wrong. She was the best one for the job. “Jed.”

“Do you think Sienna could hurt the children herself?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you think Sienna could harm the children? Would she hit them?” Abbey had to contemplate the question carefully.

“I--I don’t know honestly. I never considered her being abusive. I just thought she was neglectful. But I suppose, she could hit them just as surely as she could ignore them. Why?”

Jed prepared to give a difficult explanation. Perhaps he was making more of this than he needed to, but he wasn’t convinced. “Abbey, Toby and I had ice cream cones outside earlier this evening.” She nodded for him to continue, not admitting that she’d already known that. “Well, we made a bit of a mess, which we had cleaned up,” he rushed to add. Her impatient look told him to hurry to his point. “But when I made a mention of you being unhappy should you find it, he got scared.” He cleared his throat, trying not to relive the moment. “I was holding him, because he had gotten sticky and I realized that it was time to go in. He – He tensed right up in my arms. It was as though for a second he was reliving something or remembering it with terrible clarity, the way children are prone to. He just froze and it bothered me in a way I’m not used to yet. Am I overanalyzing this, Abbey?” She shrugged.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about my sister, except to say that she is a backstabbing, pathetic, sorry-ass excuse for a mother. So no, Jed, you‘re not overanalyzing.”

“Tell me how you really feel, Abigail. Don’t hold back now.” She smacked his arm with a surprising amount of force. He pinched her in retaliation and she laughed. She poked him in the side fast. “You don’t want to start this with me, because I will take this to the next level.”

“Oh, you’re gonna take this to the next level, are you? Well, bring it on, Mr. President.” She beckoned him with her hands. “Bring. It. On.” The worrying thoughts of the previous moments were released, as better moments seemed close at hand. There was always the morning for things such as that.

He followed her to her side of the bed and gathered her up into his arms for a lustful, wanton kiss. It felt so good that she trembled as he said her name into her lips. He slid his hands up her bare thighs and pulled her tighter to him as he begged entrance to her mouth. She admitted him with a moan at the familiar sensation of him invading her with the disposition of a starving man, but the tenderness of her man.

He soon disrobed her and tugged at her buttons one by one until her top hung open, revealing a vertical column of milky alabaster skin, marked only by the butterscotch freckles that drew a rapturous path through the valley between her breasts, down past her navel to the treasured oasis lower still. Knowing so surely that she had him, she dropped it off her shoulders to present to him what he’d been craving.

She could see in his eyes that he’d missed their unions as much as she had. There simply hadn’t been time during the recent weeks, but now, tonight there was time. The children were asleep and the world was apparently at rest. It was just the two of them, as it had been at the very beginning; as it was now.

He lowered her carefully to the bed and stroked her face, adoringly tracing its precious contours. How magnificent she was, how exquisite. She unbuttoned her favorite pajama top and motioned for him to take it off. She pulled him back over of her and smiled at him softly. There was something coy about them tonight, bashful even. This was different than just about every other time they’d been together. This was them relearning each other as if for the first time. So caring, wanting, and deserving. They’d earned this night.

“Make love to me.” It didn’t matter whether or not she’d said it out loud, the message was clear. He dropped a feather light kiss past her lips before descending to her neck and suckling just so at her throbbing pulse. She bit distractedly at her full bottom lip, toying precariously with the idea of surrendering to him completely. The idea was taken and made law when his hand preceded him down her stomach and into the brief unsuspecting panties she normally wore to bed.

He loved at her collarbone, sending a tingling spark through her a sharp but nearly painless bite. He drew in her field of freckles called stars and nuzzled at her supple breasts. She arched into his insistent touch with verve. He kissed and teased her tight, sensitive nipples with his mouth, daring to remove a hand from between her legs to her utter displeasure. She pushed that hand back its to destination or, in her opinion, its rightful place. He continued to stroke her, feeling his proud lioness winding up to strike in her need.

Slowly her eyes that had been closed in pure concentration, opened to show him her resolve. She nodded for him to take them to take the next level. She was ready for him. He pulled her panties down her toned legs and threw them to the floor thoughtlessly. He parted her knees and kissed her inner thighs, tasting the salt of her skin and sampling the sugar of her soul. The only sounds were her hurried breaths as he imbibed her womanhood thoroughly. She was so near to oblivion that she couldn’t’ conceive of anything more than that. She wanted to share that sweet oblivion with him.

“Jed.” She gasped at a shock that rose from where he dwelled. “Jed.” He looked up to her, not stopping his ministrations even as she positively thrummed with the tension of a taut chord. “Now.” He brushed that skillful mouth along her trembling flesh until it met with hers again. Their tastes merged and swirled in their kiss, leaving them both in breathless determination to be one. Still finding better use of her lips than speech, Abbey personally began to push his pajama bottoms down until they were bunched up around his thighs. He knocked them the rest of the way down without losing a bit of contact with her.

The moment had arrived and their emotions and desires were rawer today than in so long. Oh, to be young again, she thought. She stroked his stomach, already feeling the excitement in his hardness against her parted thighs. His hesitation lived only as long as it took him to ask her readiness. She was ready. She’d been ready. He encouraged her to wrap her long legs around him as he prepared himself for the mind-blowing experience that was his lover.

He moved into her in one slow, agonizing thrust that served to knock her awareness down to the seven by seven dimensions of their bed and then, only the part they occupied. Their lovemaking had become a purely sensory encounter. He steadied his place in her by holding her waist to keep her still. The heat of the intense encounter left glistening sheens of sweat on their bodies that only served to boost the friction between them. Abbey rubbed his back calmly, but with an urgency that belied the way she said his name. It was as a curse, so angry and distressed, but also a declaration of love meant only for his ears and this situation.

He silenced her with long, unforgiving kisses that stole her ability to form words or even to breathe. He shifted his weight to one arm, allowing himself to lie down fully on top of her without hurting her. He caressed the places he knew to be sensitive in time with their thrusts. As he took to her breasts again, her body tensed and pressed more firmly against him.

She took that hand from her body and grasped it in hers. The muscles within her strained like taut rubber bands, unconscious and uncaring of her efforts to wait for her husband. He pushed her legs higher around him and plunged into her wet, quivering body with the certainty of thousand-time lover. Without further adieu, she came, crying out to him by name and to God in her incoherence. The warmth of her undeniable satisfaction engulfed him, shamelessly and unrepentantly egging him on.

How it pleased him so to please her. His own energy rose next to the occasion, abandoning his rigid form for her supple one, writhing still in his merciless attack on her libido. She stilled as her name escaped his throat in a harsh gasp of exaltation. She arched up into him as the thrilling rush of his undeniable satisfaction filled her with a different fulfillment altogether.

“Oh, yes.” She welcomed him home fully. This was home to him.

“God, yes.” He settled into her still, holding her close and savoring the paradise that was his Abigail. He had loved her a thousand times before now and yet she continued to astound him with the pleasure she brought. “You are amazing.”

She smiled, keeping him close inside of her. “You are and I love you so much.”

“And I love you, Abbey. Thank you so much.”

She kissed him as a preamble. “For what?”

He returned her kiss. “For loving me. For giving me the most magnificent children ever made. For always being that positive, motivating force. I wouldn’t be here without you. Hell, I wouldn’t be who I am or have overcome that the things that I have if you weren’t with me every step of the way. I’d have quit or given up long ago. You’ve been my one true thing all the way.” He kissed her again as a tangible gift for that she’d given. “That’s what the thank you is for.”

She didn’t want to cry, but nonetheless her eyes where shining in the lamplight. How lovely she looked. “You really want to do mushy with now?” He grinned and nodded. “Well, thank you.” He seemed confounded. “Thank you for putting up with my career moves, my horrible hours, the ruined anniversaries, and forgotten birthdays, and burnt dinners. Thank you for never trying –hear that—trying to stymie my career. But, most of all, thank you for the being the One, and for loving me in spite of my sometimes-volatile temper and outspokenness.”

He chuckled at the irony of her final statement. “Don’t you know that you wouldn’t be you without that sometimes-volatile temper or that outspokenness? Even at the most inconvenient of times, I love both of these parts of you. They are just pieces of what you are. The whole picture is so much more beautiful than that.”

She could think of no satisfactory reply and decided that a kiss was better than nothing. He agreed and they reveled in the sentimental embrace. A little later, they parted for air and she took his face in her hands. “You are the sweetest, cheesiest, gentlest, sexiest man I know. I just wanted you to know that.”

“Oh, I know.” She slapped his shoulder.

“You know,” she said, finally allowing him to withdraw to lie beside her, “I had the oddest thought tonight.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her cheek.

“What thought was that?”

“You’re going to think it’s weird.”

“You won’t know until you tell me.”

She sat up and rested on her elbow, sitting her head contemplatively on her palm. “I thought that if we had made them ourselves that this is what it would’ve been like.” He didn’t say anything for a beat.

“It’s funny. I was thinking that same thing.” She turned to look at him to be sure that he wasn’t mocking her.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” He tugged her back to him and rubbed calming circles into her bare back. “Don’t you remember how every one of our children was conceived? Don’t you remember how special every time was, as though we knew we were making a baby at that instant?”

She reddened at her vivid memory. “I remember. How could I forget? There was a certain rush, an intuition. I just knew that I was pregnant. I just knew.”

“We both did.”

She put her head on his chest and played with rough gray hair growing there. “It would have been just like this.”

“Exactly.”

If either of them smiled any wider, they’d probably have to have their jaws wired in the morning. That was all right, because for a moment they were happy; not worried about what was coming or who would be the next to invade their hectic lives. They were just two lovers recalling wonderful days, safe in the prospect that they all were safe from their worst nightmares by the formidable guard of the Secret Service and the fond embrace of home.

It was ironic how deceiving appearance could be. This night, so fabulous as it had been was perfect camouflage to the ordeal about to begin. Somewhere in this world, Sienna, Abbey’s older sister and oldest nemesis was boarding a plane in the company of her paramour. They were on the way back; their plans have failed to pan out. The First Couple had something they wanted. Sienna wanted to break her sister’s heart one more time. That was her revenge for being born the inferior sister. When all else fails, take away her children. It had worked once; it would work again. A mother’s love is constant in spite of what may be more painless.

One thing, though, is much more constant and dangerous: A mother’s wrath. And with her actions, Sienna was going to step right onto the path of Abbey’s.

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