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When I collapsed on top of her, my mouth by my ear, she smiled.
"I thought you were going to make me come twice," she said with a mock-pout.
"Ha!" I said and kissed her cheek. "You came twice. I know your body like the back of my hand."
"You do," she said with a sigh. "It was one right after the other."
I removed her blindfold and then untied her bindings, kissing her wrists and ankles before going to the bathroom and getting a wet cloth so I could clean her up.
We lay together after and she snuggled against me. I threw my thigh over her possessively and stroked her arm while we lay together.
"Happy Anniversary, my love," I said.
She leaned up and smiled. "Happy Anniversary, my love."
Wrapped up in her embrace, warm from my orgasm, I was so happy despite the threat of the looming trial and video.
I didn't even remember falling asleep.
Kate
I woke up the next morning with a blistering headache.
Sophie's soft babbling over the baby monitor and the image on the tiny screen showed me she'd woken and was happily playing with her toys. I lay back and rubbed my forehead. That would teach me not to drink too much vodka and expect to feel up to being a good mother the next morning. All I wanted to do was turn over and go back to sleep, but that wasn't going to happen. I knew Sophie's rhythms. She woke early, played for a while with her pacifier in her mouth, and then started to squawk once she was bored with her toys. She'd stand up and bounce with her hands on the crib rail and I'd panic that she'd one day manage to bounce right out of the crib.
I had maybe five minutes at best.
I turned over to find myself staring into Drake's blue-blue eyes...
"Good morning, Mrs. Morgan. Regret that last shot of vodka, do you? I know I do."
"That I do." I reached out and brushed hair out of his eyes. "I'm glad we were able to do a scene, despite everything. I wish I didn't have to even think about the video and what's going to happen next. I just know we'll be followed around and people will point and talk. It makes me sick."
Drake rolled over closer to me, pulling me into his arms. "I'm sorry about all this. You didn't sign up for sexual scandal when you met me and agreed to marry me."
I looked deeply into his eyes while he brushed hair off my cheek.
"I signed up to be with you -- you Drake. All of you. Every inch. Everything about you, good and bad. So, we're dealing with some of the bad right now. One day, it will all end and we'll go back to some new normal. No one will even care about the trial or remember it. We'll be just two more people on the street with our children."
"I hope so. I hope we're not a couple of old fogies by then."
"Old fogies... You could never be an old fogie. I'll bet your dad was still a rake even when he was in his fifties."
Drake sighed and lay on his back, pulling me beside him. "He didn't get much beyond that, sadly. God, I wish he was still alive. There's so much I'd want to say to him. When I was younger, I resented the hell out of him because he was always so damn busy with his work and with the company. Now, I understand a lot more about him. He was a lonely man who filled his life with work to compensate. He didn't know how to do anything else. He didn't know how to show love. To be with other people in a wa
y that made them feel secure. I hope I never get like that, Kate." He turned to look in my eyes. "Please tell me if I do."
"You could never be that way."
He smiled at me but shook his head. "I was exactly like that before I met you. You must remember he was my role model. It's so easy to fall into old patterns and become self-absorbed. It was meeting you and realizing what I'd been missing and why I was missing it that changed me – for the better. I realized the difference between Ethan and my dad and what kind of man I really wanted to be. I wanted to be more like Ethan. Devoted to his family. Involved. Strong for them, but accepting of who they really were."
I lay on my stomach beside him and laid my head on my arms.
"I never really saw him that way until I met you. It's strange but I felt like my father was a controlling old bastard for most of my life. Like, I could never live up to his expectations, and he never approved of me. You showed me that all along, he was just accepting everything I did and said but was helping me figure out what I wanted. I just didn't realize it."
"He questioned you when you challenged his authority, but he allowed you to be rebellious and so rebellion became normal. What it did was make you know yourself by making you justify your decisions. Being a judge probably allowed him to see different points of view and respect them and know how to get to the truth of things."
"I know that now, but back then? It felt like he was always judging me." Then I laughed. "Of course, he was a judge, but all he was doing was making me judge myself and my ideas."
