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Her giggle makes my cock jerk.
“Hello, Prince Albert.” She walks over to the enormous aviary that takes up half the room.
“Hello, asshole,” he replies, which makes her burst into laughter as I roll my eyes.
“Albert,” I scold, knowing it won’t make any difference. “Sorry, baby. He’s a grouch.”
“He’s perfect.” She looks at the brilliant red and green bird on whom I have come to love more than I’ll ever admit.
He spreads his wide red wings, flapping in a fury, then jumps over to a branch closer to where Chastity stands.
“Show off.” I shake my head as he bobs his up and down.
“Sucker.” The bird walks back and forth on the long branch.
“You tell me something about yourself now.” I want to know everything.
“I’m a simple girl.”
“You are not. You are complex, smart, beautiful, many things, but simple is not how I would describe you. Tell me about you when you were younger. How you grew up, your family…”
I walk over and open the small refrigerator against the wall, withdrawing a plastic bowl with cut up fruit, and take it to the caged opening on the aviary. I slide pieces of fruit through the bars, watching Albert fly over and start to eat.
“Growing up was fine. I was pretty happy for the most part. My mom was a nurse and we sort of grew up together in some ways. She was young when she had me. She always had my back. Pushed me but believed in me. She’s the reason I got the internship at Westwood.”
“Oh, how so?”
“A contest. The parameters were to come up with a product, show the need and then how you would market and advertise your new product to the world.”
“And, what was your product?”
“It was an idea for a service. Like a website for parents that were sick. They could leave thoughts, little videos, their history, messages delivered in the future for their children. So, when they were gone, there would be this sort of history as well as a way for the parent to still be a part of their children’s lives even after they passed away.”
“Wow.” I am taken aback by her sensitivity and the originality of the idea.
As I stare at her, my heart already knows there’s only one way out of this.
Til death do us part…
The consideration of marriage has never, ever been on my radar, but with Chastity I can’t imagine life without her. I’ll get a ring on that finger, my name attached to hers and our future laid out, even if I have to kidnap her and drug her to come on this supersonic ride into our forever.
“So, you didn’t know your father at all growing up?”
“Not until later. My mom died when I was twelve so… I was alone pretty much all the time after I moved to my dad’s. He never was interested in me before then. Well, he was on the birth certificate, and my mom left him a note in her will, sort of telling him he had to step up, so I sort of became his responsibility. He had another family, a wife who always felt I was an intrusion into their perfect life with his new daughter who was never intentionally cruel to me, just sort of indifferent.”
My heart wrenches. More at the detached, unemotional way she says it than the news itself. It’s clear that she has worked hard to insulate herself from the pain.
“I’m sorry, baby.” I don’t mention the PI information I had. It did include her mother’s death, and that she had been living with her father, but I wanted her to tell me. I don’t ever want her to know that I dug into her life, her past, my suspicions over her potential alignment with whomever is setting me up with the harassment cases. I want to know more, but I already regret asking her about her childhood, only because I see the pain in her face. I can’t bear to see her hurting. “What do you want to do someday?” With a smile, I add, “When you grow up?”
She grins, and a blush stains her cheeks when she looks down at her outfit. “Well, I mean, winning the marketing internship has been fun, but I really want to write children’s books. And bake. Maybe a baking show for kids where I read then bake something and they can follow along at home.” She pulls her shoulder to her ear, her eyes low. “Probably dumb. I don’t know for sure. But, you asked.”
I inhale. “Not dumb and yes I asked so promise me you will always be honest. Whatever you need to say, with respect of course, I need to know. If it’s important to you, it’s probably more important to me.”
She shrugs, twisting her luscious pink lips to the side, and I feel a change of subject is the right thing at the moment.
