A Bundle of Mannies Read online

  And Maggie and I had become buddies, sharing disgust over those bombs and fascination over our science experiments. One day, that girl would take over the world, find a cure for a horrible disease or identify a new species of mammal...maybe a new planet. At this stage she loved anything ending in ology...geology, biology...but also chemistry and any math I presented to her. She was learning to read, but mostly so she could learn more science. She even preferred cookies in the shape of dinosaurs and stars.

  Maybe she’d be the first kid on Mars.

  I’d love nothing more than to stay with this family while the girls grew up, but odds were that, sometime during those years, the right alpha would knock on the door and Ronnie would answer. I did not want to be here when it happened.

  With that in mind, I crawled into bed and grabbed my laptop to look at the classes I had in mind. The best favor I could do for myself was continue to move forward toward my goals. So, in a couple of years, when Mae was safely past the worries for her immune system and could spend her days with germy children—I hated the very idea—I would be ready to begin the new chapter of my life as well.

  One of the classes I wanted, Creativity in Early Childhood Education, was not available online. And, now that I thought of it, maybe that was a good thing. It began in a few days and was three evenings a week for six weeks. Although I was technically free in the evenings, and Ronnie tried to take over so I didn’t have to help, if I was home, I was always slipping out to put a load of laundry in, find a favorite stuffie, or make Ronnie a pot of his favorite tea.

  Clearly breaking the manny rules. This was Ronnie’s family time, and I owed it to him not to be underfoot. So...with a click and a few filled-in lines, I was signed up for class. Three evenings taken care of. And I could add an online class in working with early readers to fill more of my time.

  So, I’d be far too busy to think about Ronnie’s full lips under mine, his dick hard in his clothes soaked by my bath water… I’d be occupied with theories of education and perhaps some novel crafts and not listening to him chatting with Maggie in the next room or watching a movie after she was asleep.

  He slouched on the couch at those times, looking all relaxed and cuddly.

  All signed up for my classes, I checked out of the college site and closed the lid on my laptop. And my eyes. Ronnie on the couch. My hand crept under the covers to close around my dick and give a little squeeze. What would he do if I sat next to him and tugged him into my lap.

  My fingers clenched and released.

  If I kissed those lips, slid my mouth around to nibble on his ear and then down his neck to his collarbone? His ass would be centered over my dick, the one in the fantasy, not the one swelling in my grip in my lonely bed.

  Would he protest? Or would he wriggle, making me even harder? Would he tip his chin back so I could graze my mouth down over his—now suddenly bare—chest to find his flat masculine nipples. Although, he’d fed two little girls, and even now fed one so they would still be swollen, and I’d soon leave them behind to explore his belly, the happy trail leading down to his groin, something I’d fantasized about so often on Friday nights after seeing him long ago.

  I rubbed my palm over the head of my cock, spreading the droplet of precum for lubrication since I didn’t want to stop to get the lube from the nightstand drawer. Lube I would use only for this because the omega would be slick and ready for me when I tugged his shorts down and settled him again on my lap, this time with nothing between us and my cock settled in the crease.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Fantasy me whispers to him. “Are you sure you want to be together?”

  Because even in my dreams it was not only about sex. But when he whispers yes and I slide into his slick hot passage...my real cock explodes, necessitating more laundry but so worth it.

  Because this is the last time I’m having this dream. From now on, it’s all business, childcare and career goals. I can’t afford to let what little of my heart I still possessed slip away. I’d already made all the mistakes I needed to, crashed and burned too many times.

  And this time I could lose everything.

  I glanced at the Manny Guide on my nightstand and tucked it in the drawer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ronnie

  “What are you doing?” Zave said from behind me, startling me. I’d missed him coming through the door. It was one of his class nights.

  I’d come to loathe those. Which was more kinds of unfair than I could count. He deserved more than to be stuck at a dead-end job with a timestamp. And just because I missed him. During dinner and after Maggie and Mae fell asleep and all of the times in between, none of that made it any less important that he take these classes.

  “I am trying to find all the things those boys got into that day.” I pulled my head out of the pantry. “The night Maggie got sick.” I would not blush. I would not blush. Fuck, I’m blushing just thinking about his wet naked body—his lips on mine. “She mentioned the frosting, and I forgot.”

  I handed him the bag that now contained the five messed-with containers. They had eaten almost all of the frosting in each of them but left just enough and the lids unsealed just enough that the neighborhood mice came running.

  “I thought it was a jar. Why did you have five jars of frosting?” The question was legit.

  “It was bad parenting,” I confessed. “Every time we went to the grocery store, Maggie would ask for stuff to make cake, and I would remind her we already had some, and she would say no, not that kind, and list a new kind. And our cake baking never kept up with our ingredient buying.” Not that jarred frosting and boxed mixes were ingredients, but still.

  “And how is that bad parenting?” He brought the bag over to the sink.

  “Stop.” He froze, giving me an odd look. Probably because I sounded like a bossy asshat. “The mice got in the pantry. I’d rather not put them in the sink.”

  He held the bag away from him. “So, this is operation bleach the pantry.”

  “And set all the traps.” I pointed to the bag from the home supply store on the counter. That had been a fun little trip with two kids in tow, one of them old enough to know what a mouse trap was, which was how we ended up with kind traps when I wanted the mice dead.

  “Let me change, and I will help you out.” He set the frosting containers beside me, his scent wafting through the air giving my body ideas it should not. “I’ll get something on I can boil. Afterward.”

  Not a bad idea. Eww mice.

  “You should do your schoolwork. I got this.” He’d worked too hard on this class, and even though he was only a couple of weeks in, that was a lot for a class as compact as the one he was taking. I don’t know how he managed while working.

  “I handed in my paper today and have nothing else assigned to work on yet. I’ll be a minute.” And like that, he left the room.

  I could really use the help. I wasn’t sure all what the boys had been thinking that day, but they had opened bunches of random weird things that needed to be cooked before consuming. I probably should ask Maggie about that.

  By the time Zave returned in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, I had an entire garbage bag full of open boxes of macaroni, ramen, stuffing, and rice.

  “Those poor boys.” Zave took in the mess. “I bet they didn’t even know the picture on the outside was after someone cooked it.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I knew their lives couldn’t be great, but that was an entirely different level of ungreat. They were foraging for food in my pantry.

  “If they come again, we should show them where things are they can eat.” Not that I thought for one second Zave would let them go hungry. But feeding them and letting them know there was more if they needed it were two different things.

  “I don’t think Sally will bring them back. That asshat of a son left, leaving her with the boys, and, from the few times I’ve seen her, she seems happy, and they look better. So much better.” He took the can goods of
f the top shelf. “I should make a bleach solution for us to wipe these down and to clean the pantry shelves with.”

  He wandered off to do that, and I thought about the bomb he just dropped. Sure, I knew he’d been busy, and, by sheer fact of that alone, we hadn’t been chatting as much. But that was a lot not to know. Or was it? We weren’t married. I didn’t need to hear about every little thing that happened in his day.

  Except I wanted to. I wanted to hear about what he did with the girls, who he saw on his travels, what student in class made the most eye roll worthy statement of the evening—everything.

  “Do you want to wipe the cans or the shelves?” he asked, settling the bucket on the counter, the oddly comforting smell of bleach tickling my nose.

  “No preference.” Which was a lie. I wanted to have him wipe the shelves so I could ogle his ass. But I would never say that, nor would I do it. Okay, fine I would look, but I shouldn’t, so I was possibly a quarter gentleman.

  “Then I’ll get the cans. Put them on the table?”

  I looked around the room. That was as good a place as any. With any luck the bleach smell would keep the rodents away or they would find the trap. Either worked for me.

  “Sure.” I took the rest of the cans off the top shelf, which was not the best place for them, and set them near the bucked. I took the clean rag off the counter and wet it with the bleach water. It didn’t look like the mice had hit the can shelf, but I wasn’t taking chances.

  Climbing on the step stool so I could reach the very back of the shelf, I was stunned still by the intake of his breath, and then, before I took the half a second required to make good choices, I spit out, “You wanted me to do the shelves so you could watch my ass.”

  I was determined to fuck things up—at least my subconscious was.

  “I’m not hating the view.” He shrugged.

  What was I supposed to do with that?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zave

  And how was I going to handle this? I could laugh it off as if it were an ogling joke, even though we both knew I’d been staring hard at his ass--and it wasn’t the first time. Or I could come the rest of the way clean and say, “Every day I spend here, I want your ass more.”

  But that wasn’t it, not entirely anyway. I wanted everything. Him, the girls, the family life. And if I seduced him now, I’d probably be blowing that. I’d already worked it through in my mind so many times, and every scenario ended up with us going our separate ways. Ronnie was nowhere near ready for a relationship. He’d just given birth to his late wife’s child just a few short months before. So even if something happened, it would be because he was horny. If he’d wanted more with me, it would have happened years ago. Sure, we’d flirted, but nothing more. And I had made it clear I’d wanted more—hadn’t I?

  I was young and not that self-confident…

  But I worked for him, took care of his kids. If we crossed that invisible line, it would ruin our working relationship.

  The same thoughts had been going round and round in my head since the first day I accepted the position as his manny. And they weren’t stopping. So couldn’t-—

  “Zave!” I blinked out of my self-imposed inner chanting to see him tumbling backward off the step stool, and I lurched forward to save him. But he weighed very close to what I did, and the extra impetus gained by falling even that short distance took us both to the floor. Ronnie, however, had a cushioned landing.

  “Oof!” I tried to get air in my compacted lungs. “Are you all right?”

  “Are you?” He sounded a little breathless, too, but his voice held more than that.

  “Fine.” I sucked in a breath despite his elbow in my ribs. “Are you laughing? Because this isn’t funny. You could very well have broken your neck. I’m getting rid of that stool—”

  And then he turned over in my arms and we were lying on his kitchen floor face to face. The scent of bleach was oddly erotic as I cupped the back of his head to bring his face down to mine. And we kissed.

  He tasted nothing like bleach, but more like the tea he often sipped in the evening, Earl Grey with that light floral note. And he’d had a cookie, at some point. Sweet, sweet omega. Lips soft and welcoming, parting on a sigh. I accepted the invitation and swept my tongue inside, desperate for more of him. We were pressed together from shoulder to groin, and I released his face to grasp his hips while we continued to kiss, just enjoying the contact and hating that there were layers of fabric between us. I so wanted him skin to skin…

  After a lot more kisses, I lifted Ronnie up to sit next to me on the cool tile floor. And said the hardest words I’d ever expressed. “We can’t do this.” I stood and reached a hand down to him.

  Ronnie accepted my grip and rose, cheeks flushed and grinning. “We certainly can’t. Not right here in the kitchen. Maggie could walk in on us.” Valid but I’d never taken it that far.

  “Not to mention the mice.”

  I shuddered. “Let’s not mention them.” I emptied the bucket of bleach water in the sink then let him lead me through the living room and toward the master bedroom. “Ronnie? This could get complicated.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder, a wicked twinkle in his eye. “Let’s hope so.”

  My breath caught, worse than when it had been knocked out of me. There was something about him I hadn’t seen before, not even way back when. Sure, he’d been young and carefree, without the responsibilities he now bore...but also very young, and the man who I’d been kissing on his kitchen floor was all that and a bag of chips.

  By the time we approached the bedroom, we were nearly at a dead run, and clothes were starting to fly off. He paused just long enough to make sure the baby-com was on before we landed on the bed and went back to kissing. Only this time, it was naked kissing and no turning back. The reasons why not to do this tried to surge forward, but I shoved them back into a closet in my mind and closed and locked the door. His skin was hot, with only a light dusting of hair on his legs and chest that scraped against my body, setting my senses aflame.

  I wanted to take our time, explore every inch of him because I’d waited a very long time for this, but I wasn’t sure how long ago Mae had gone to sleep and she still woke a couple of times a night. Also, I mentioned how long I’d waited for this, right?

  And all that waiting meant I was seconds from exploding and didn’t want to do it before we even got down to business. If this was a huge mistake and we woke up realizing that in the morning, I at least wanted a memory to carry me through the rest of the years.

  Because I already knew that once I plunged into my omega’s body, I’d be ruined for any others. Some alphas scoffed at the idea of “the one,” but I’d known it was him from that first Friday night in the library.

  My heart thudded in my ears, my dick throbbed, and my hands trembled.

  Ronnie smiled up at me, the streetlight outside casting its glow over his face. “We don’t have a lot of time, alpha,” he murmured. “Mae will probably be awake in a half hour or so.” And that answered that.

  But still...a lot could happen in a half hour. I slid down his body and grasped his dick. It was as hard as mine, and as I closed my lips over it, I felt as if an alarm clock would be going off soon. Next time—please let there be one—we could maybe get a sitter and go to a hotel. But for now, I lapped and sucked, nibbled and licked, a little faster than I’d have preferred, wanting his pleasure to happen more than mine.

  He panted, digging his fingers into my hair, and tugged me up his body. “Please, I want you inside me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ronnie

  Thinking was not happening. I would not allow it. Thinking would lead to all the reasons this was a horrible idea, and that was something I could not allow. So every time my brain tried to work, I kissed him harder, grabbed him closer, or begged him for more.

  I wanted him, and he wanted me. That was my focus. Until he put me in his mouth. Then I lost all focus of all things except the
feel of his mouth around my cock.

  “Please, I want you inside me,” I begged. But instead of popping off me and sliding in where I wanted him most, he doubled his efforts. He sucked a little bit harder, swirled his tongue in some magical way that had me seeing stars, and added a finger into the mix.

  As he fucked me with his finger and swallowed around me as I reached the back of his throat, my ability to hold back dissipated, and I found myself coming down his throat.

  He swallowed every single drop before licking me clean. Hottest. Thing. Ever.

  My head fell back, my eyes falling closed as he climbed up beside me.

  “That wasn’t what I meant when I said I wanted you inside me,” I sassed.

  “I didn’t see you complaining.” He kissed the side of my head and pulled me into his arms. “Besides, when I make love to you, I don’t want to rush.”

  I tensed up slightly at his choice of words. Not if but when. I snuggled in close. I had no idea what daybreak would bring or even the next ten minutes for that matter, but the possibility of this being more than a one and done was now on the table, and I was going to take it.

  “I didn’t mean—” He was cut off by the stirrings of Mae over the baby monitor.

  “Good call, alpha. You’d have been knotted inside me when duty called.” And while there were ways to mitigate that situation, it wouldn’t be pleasant for either of us. “I’ll be right back.”

  I started to sit up, but he yanked me back down. “I got this.” He kissed my lips briefly as Mae’s stirrings turned into a bit of a cry.

  “I’m the one with the goods.” I pointed to my nipples, which were far from sexy given their current status as nourishment provider. Not that I’d be able to tell that from the darkening of his eyes.