"Danary is still in a meeting right now." I turned around at the familiar voice, only to find Benedict standing behind me with a knowing smirk. He continued, "You were looking for her, weren't you?" I rolled my eyes at his unamusing antics but nodded anyway. "Liam's class ends in an hour, and I told her I would pick her up before then." "I see." He opened up the door to his office and gestured for me to enter. "She's running about half an hour behind schedule today. Why don't you wait in here until she's ready?" I raised an eyebrow in confusion but accepted his offer anyway. Sitting down in one of the free chairs in his office, I asked, "Did something go wrong? Jane isn't usually one to run behind schedule?" Benedict chuckled slyly as he rounded his desk. "I thought you, of all people, would know why she's late. After all, you are the one responsible for her limping, aren't you?" My cheeks heated up at the insinuation, making me divert my eyes out of the embarrassment of being
"Achilles? Is everything alright?" a soft voice called out from behind the bathroom door. Diverting my track, I walked over to the closed door and replied reassuringly, "Everything is fine, my love. Why do you ask?" I heard the water swish for a moment from behind the door before she quietly mumbled, "You were taking a while to put Liam to bed, so I was worried something was wrong." I chuckled softly. Though she had quite strong motherly instincts, she was still young and had quite an adorably innocent shyness to her. Leaning back against the wall, I told her, "Liam just wanted to ask me a few questions. He accidentally saw the marks peaking out of your sweater and thought someone was harassing you at work again." Plop!I raised an eyebrow at the sound of what I assumed was something dropping into the water. "Um... W-What did you tell him?" "The truth. That they are love marks from me." "A-Achilles! Y-You can't say those types of things to a five-year-old." A soft smile crept
I mindlessly trailed my finger along a sliver of Jane's bare leg sticking out of the blanket as I laid down with my head resting in her lap. Her free hand was nestled in the messy strands of my hair as she continued to rest her book next to the fireplace, taking no mind to my wandering hands. It was one of the rare moments in the week when neither of us had any work to do, and Liam was still out of the house, spending the day with the professor I had found for him to study under at Princeton. I skimmed my hand up along her calf and under the blanket, squeezing the mark on the inside of her thigh and earning a light hum from her in question. She pulled her fingers out my hair and gently brushed my hair out of my face, quietly asking me, "Is something wrong?" I shooked my head as I continued to run my hand back down her thigh, stopping at her knee right before it left the warmth of the fluffy blanket. "I was just thinking." She continued to stroke my head soothingly and asked, "Abo
"Are you sure you don't want to help your mom pick out her wedding dress instead?" I glanced down at Liam worriedly. I was going to spend the day running errands, so I wasn't sure if he would enjoy it all that much.But the little one only nodded in affirmation and chirped, "Mom said that I should go with dad because he doesn't notice when other girls hit on him." I sighed at his words. Was I really that bad? I had no problem noticing the golddiggers in the past who would try to come onto me with their suggestive touches and naked bodies sprawled out on my desks, but was I really oblivious to all other types of less extreme forms of flirtation?Holding my hand, Liam skipped along with my steps and continued, "Besides, I want to spend time with dad. We haven't gotten to spend much time together with just the two of us since I started taking classes from that professor." I smiled as I rounded the corner of the block. "Then, why don't we get breakfast together before we finish that to
I laced my fingers through Achilles's hair, twirling little strands here and there as I waited for him to finish the paperwork that he had brought to bed with him. He was dressed in only his sweatpants, as usual, but he normally tried not to bring work back with him and definitely never brought them straight into bed before. He had papers scattered across the bed as he laid stiffly in between my legs, sorting through the papers one at a time with deep crease lines etched into his forehead. I gently rubbed his frown lines away with my thumb and asked, "Did something happen at work?" He shook his head and set aside the papers with a heavy sigh. "I just got distracted thinking about something else at work today..." I carefully eased his reading glasses off and pulled his head back to rest against my stomach. Stroking his head soothingly, I asked, "Would you like to tell me about it? It's alright if you don't." He melted instantly under my touch, closing his eyes with a soft contentl
I hesitantly knocked on Liam's closed bedroom door as Achilles stood by my side, giving me a supportive squeeze to my shoulder. Not wanting to accidentally wake him if he was still sleep, I called out softly, "Can we come inside, honey?" Surprisingly, even though it was still quite early in the morning at only 7 AM, a flurry of scrambles scurried about behind the closed doors. The sound of fluttering papers and dropping pencils floated out from the room until the door finally opened up was a messy little boy standing in front of us. Although he was in his pajamas, his hair was tousled every which way and his eyes had little bags hanging underneath them. His face was pale, almost as if it had been completed drained of life. Handing the bowl of fruits off to Achilles, I worriedly crouched down to Liam's height and cupped his little face between my hands, gently turning his head side to side in a panic. "Are you not feeling well? But you're not warm... Do you have a headache? A sore
I tapped briefly on my phone's screen, making it light up with a wallpaper picture of Achilles and Liam squatting side by side of each other in the garden with dirt littered all over themselves. I smiled at the picture, but what I was more curious about was the time. 11:53 AM. 7 more minutes before Achilles arrives with Liam at my office to have lunch together. He sent me a text half way through the morning, telling me about how Liam was doing on his first day at his office and asking to try out a new café down the street for lunch. And even though I was swamped at work with meetings, I didn't have the heart to tell them no after I saw how happy Liam looked sitting in Achilles's ginormous office chair in the picture that Achilles attached to his message. Thus, I ended up rushing through my morning meetings and pushed off a few of my afternoon meetings to make room for an hour long break for my boys. But, I was still running a bit late despite cutting my morning meetings short and I
"So... I heard that my son recently turned into an overprotective hulk." I looked up from the tailor who was helping me alter my wedding dress. Keeping as still as I could, I hesitantly asked Mrs. Cordova, "Are you talking about what happened last week?" She nodded as she thumbed the edge of her magazine. "Benedict told me about it. He's practically my third son and often whines to me about Rafael like a younger sibling who can't win with his brother." I bit my lip nervously. I had tried to apologize to Mr. Serman about Achilles's behavior and the new holes in the walls of my office, but he had insisted that it was nothing and waved it off. He simply stroked the damaged walls over and over again with heavy sighs, muttering something about how he was going to get Achilles to pay back the damage in double. And it definitely didn't help that Achilles refused to apologize to Benedict for damaging his office building, saying that Benedict deserved it for not keeping a better eye on hi