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Chapter 16
Anthony
“Hailey… open the fucking door, babe.” Banging on the barrier with my fist, I leaned heavily against the wall to listen to the silence that radiated from the porous wood. “Don’t make me kick it down. We need to talk about this.”
Of all the things I was feeling, anger was absent, and I clenched and released my jaw in agitation. A soft, muffled clunk from beyond the door reached my ears, and relief surged through my chest. Pushing myself off the wall, I raked my hands through my hair as this morning flashed through my mind’s eye.
Hailey had been horrified that her meltdown last night had resulted in delaying Antonya being fitted with a diaper. She’d called out of work after crying all night; I knew because she hadn’t left her room in the hour or so since I took Antonya’s 5 o'clock feeding. Thankfully, Kelly was willing to take the baby so I could deal with this.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I expected—having a baby was downright traumatic in my opinion.
“Hailey! I said open the damn door!” Just as my demand rang out, the lock on Hailey’s bedroom door gave way, and I had to resist barging into her room. Crossing my arms over my chest, I held my breath around a heart beating hard, and she peeked out through a thin crack.
“What?” Her voice crackled harshly, and her bloodshot eye narrowed slightly between puffy lids. “I can’t do this, Anthony.”
“Can’t do what, exactly? Be specific. What can you not do?” Hailey faltered, her eye training on the floor, and I gripped the edge of the door to push it open. “Hailey, do you think you’re good for nothing but being Antonya’s mom?”
“I don’t know anymore. I’m tired.” Wrapping her arms around herself, her voice practically dribbled in uncertainty. Rolling my jaw, I raked my fingers through my hair as I furiously tried to think of what to say. Nothing I’d ever done could’ve prepared me for a postpartum mental breakdown.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Hailey, but it’s okay not to be perfect.” Red-rimmed eyes landed on me, and I clenched my hands into fists by my sides to avoid reaching for her. “Trust me—the only people that care if you fuck up, are fuck ups themselves.”
“Is that really what you think or are you just trying to make me feel better about the fact that I put myself before Antonya?”
“It’s what I really think, Hailey.” My answer was immediate, and Hailey stared blankly at me for a long, tense moment before deflating like a popped balloon. Her heavy, exhausted sigh hit me square in the chest, and my lips thinned as she shuffled back to drop onto her bed. “Look, Antonya is with Kelly until 2-ish, so take this time for yourself, okay? I need to get some new clothes anyway, so… just… take a really hot, long bath or something to relax.”
“That’s not what I want.” Blood rushed in my ears as Hailey shook her head wildly, and I almost thought she’d guilt trip me into fucking her. Not that I would give in, of course. “I need you to tell me what to do—Anthony, please—I can’t think straight.”
“I thought you would want me to tie you up before ordering you around.” Surprise colored my voice and rose my eyebrows, but the thick dose of arousal that shot through my chest stiffened my cock. My abdomen tightened, and I walked stiffly the few feet towards Hailey to crouch in front of her. She looked tired and confused, and she managed a ghost of a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Who’d’a thunk it?” Her response was hollow, almost abysmal, and my mind whirred at a mile a minute for a long second. She simply watched me with hopeful expectancy, and I tried to think of something that wasn’t humiliating.
Really, such a thing was pretty hard; being a Dom was about control—at least, for me. I didn’t get off by having some bitch lick my shoes. At the same time, though, there wasn’t much of a grey area.
“Stand up.” Straightening as the demand left my mouth, I took a step back as Hailey rose to her feet. Staring at her, pale and covered in goosebumps everywhere her thin, padded bra and boy-shorts didn’t reach, caused my hard-on to shrivel. “Sit down.”
Dropping down without a single breath of hesitation, she never took her eyes off me even as I opened my mouth again.
“Kneel on the floor.” The sight of her on her knees was ru
ined by her tear-stained face and bright, almost fevered eyes, and I frowned deeply.
“Stand up.”
“Sit down.”
“Kneel on the floor.”
I feel like that guy from the karate movie.
Hailey was sweating buckets, trembling uncontrollably, and panting shallow, wheezing gasps by the time I held my voice in my tight chest. Her body swayed to the side dangerously, and she stumbled slightly over her own feet in an attempt to catch herself before she fell. Heavy lids shielded her eyes, and I tore my eyes off her for only a second to check the alarm clock on her nightstand.
She’d been moving continuously for the past two hours; it didn’t feel like even 20 minutes had passed, though.
“Let’s get you that bath now.” Jerking at my hard tone, Hailey went to sit on the edge of her bed habitually only to miss. Her ass slid down the side of the mattress and box spring, and her feet slipped out from under her against the hardwood flooring. She landed hard, but I didn’t do anything to stop it. Carefully picking her up with an arm around her back and the other under her knees, I held back a sigh.
At least Hailey wasn’t a wreck. I preferred an exhausted, quivering mess over an exhausted, quivering, emotional mess any day. She was light, skinnier than I remembered, but her words from the other day at the doctor’s office echoed in my ears. There was a thing on the TV there that said a woman could burn up to 20 calories per ounce of milk.
Antonya took three ounces every three hours, but Hailey was pumping at least 12. That was pretty mind-boggling. Whatever the figures, it was enough to make the effort to count it in my head too much to go through.
