A Missed Opportunity

64

✧𝙽𝚘𝚊𝚑✧

My son's a monster. This is a known fact, but it still catches me off guard every single time when it's proven.

I stare, mortified as he repeatedly smashes his dinosaur toy into my damsel that was in distress a second ago. Batman was literally just around the couch, ready to save her from this random prehistoric creature tearing through the city.

He cackles while he does it. And once my damsel is dead, he grabs her and holds her at the mouth of his dinosaur, throwing her across the room. It's his trademark. What's that thing they call serial killer trademarks? Signature?

"Boys, time to get ready for bed!" Kiara calls out from the other room. And just like that, my son is back to his normal, cutesy eight-year-old self. He smiles and gets up from the ground, happily heading down the hall with a dog hurrying along after him and leaving me to clean up the mess of
the crime scene he just created.

Once I'm finished, I join him in the bathroom to start my own bedtime process. He's a little ahead of me since he had his head start, but he still lingers in the bathroom with me until I finish so that I can walk him to his room with Gus. By the time we leave the bathroom, Kiara is joining the group too.

We proceed to tuck both our son and the dog into bed like we've gotten into the routine of doing. I like our routine. It's just the three of us—four if you count the dog—which makes our routine that more stable. We have breakfast together every morning and leave the house around the same time to start our days. When it's over, I pick my son up from school and either run a couple of errands before going home or go home immediately. We both take the dog out for a walk when we get there, then I sit down with him to help him with his homework. Sometimes, we wait for his mom though because neither of us fully get what his homework is asking for. Rarely though.

When she does get home, dinner's ready for her and we eat together again as we tell each other about our days. After dinner, it's someone's turn to clean up which Cameron is sometimes included in. We all spend some more time together until it's time to get ready for bed. Cameron and Gus go to bed around eight forty-five. Kiara and I stay up for a while together before we too go to bed.

Sometimes we talk while we're up, sometimes we don't. She'll either pick up a book to read in bed or we'll sit on the couch to watch a movie in the dark. Tonight, it's the latter. The only sound in the room is the characters on screen and the only light is the tv itself. She tossed her legs on my lap when we sat down, so I absently drag my hands slowly up and down her thighs and a little further down, occasionally squeezing her thighs in my palms just for the feel.

As she keeps telling me, I have a one track mind. So, every time I squeeze her thighs, I shift in my seat. She never says or does anything. Not until I start letting a hand drift further up her thigh to squeeze gently there. In response, she shifts a little in her own seat, resulting in her legs opening a bit wider. I continue what I'm doing in silence and without either of us looking at each other, almost as if it's not actually happening.

She hums quietly when I start dragging the tips of my fingers lightly up and down her skin, going a bit further than before but not where I could be going. It's a little frustrating to her when I knock us down a few pegs instead of escalating like I had been, and it makes her move around some more. I chuckle to myself. She only responds in a deep sigh.

I go on like this for a while. It drives me crazy too, but I like the amusement of this too good for me to stop so soon. At some point though, I decide it's time for the game to come to an end and go back to escalating, opting to spread her legs wider so I can get up and lay myself between them. She wraps her legs around my hips absently and almost on instinct. She lets out a breath as she watches me curiously. I duck my head down to kiss her cheek slowly, making a trail from her cheek to her lips. She kisses me back, but the way she kisses hints that she doesn't want them to be fast. I don't speed us up yet even though I thought that's what she was hinting at with that hum.