Stealing the Show (PolyAm Fam #3)

Chapter 4

four

leo

Being on nightshift sucked, but when Maggie didn’t have any clients until noon, it could make for a nice morning. We leisurely lounged in bed after making love, both of us scrolling our phones.

I put my phone down on the nightstand and rolled over, slinging my arm around her waist and pulling her flush with my pelvis. Mmm, she was so fucking warm and soft. “You came first, so you have to go make coffee.”

“Is that how it works?” She set her phone down too.

“I think it’s fair, don’t you?”

“I just got an email back from the surrogate place I contacted for info,” she said.

Oh. So we were being serious now.

I might need coffee for this conversation.

But it was still progress. I had been trying to get her to discuss our options since our appointment with Dr. Levin earlier this week, and all she would commit to was filling out the information request form on this pregnancy surrogate website. She didn’t seem too thrilled about that option.

“What did they say?” I nuzzled her neck, hoping I could keep her relaxed and get the conversation flowing.

She seemed to have an easier time facing away from me. “They suggested making an appointment to come and go over the details and costs. They also have a database of potential surrogates we can search. They are all over the Midwest.”

“Oh, they’re not local?”

“We could try to find someone local,” she clarified. “Possibly in Indy.”

I imagined what partnering with a surrogate might look like. “I just thought we’d be involved in the process, you know? Going to doctor appointments, being there at the ultrasounds and the delivery. Holding our baby when it’s still fresh from the womb.”

“Eww,” she shuddered against me, “that sounds gross.”

“That is mild on the grossness scale compared to some of the shit I deal with at work,” I reminded her, and she let out a soft chuckle. Then there was a beat of silence until she sighed loudly. “I’m glad we’re talking about it, baby.”

Her voice was so small, but she eked out, “It’s just not the way I envisioned any of this, you know?”

I pressed a kiss right behind her ear. “I know, but it’s okay. If we have a baby in the end, it doesn’t matter how he or she got here, you know?”

“I just envisioned us…you know…making love. You putting a baby in me. Planting a seed. The old-fashioned way. Missing a period, taking a test. Getting all excited to see those two lines come up.”

“Tell me more about this planting a seed thing…?” My cock twitched at her description of the process.

It was true, every time we had tried for a baby, I was raring to go. There was something so primal, so animalistic about trying to impregnate my wife. To fill her with a baby. My baby. Why did it make me feel so feral…so…

Oh yeah, I was hard again. I couldn’t help grinding my stiff cock into her fleshy ass cheeks.

“Leo…”

“What?” I tried to sound innocent.

“Are you actually turned on by this conversation?” Her tone was incredulous.

“Um…” My cock pulsed. Kinda hard to deny it now, buddy , I thought in a southerly direction.

She flipped over in my arms and pierced me with her stare. Her lawyer stare. It meant her lie detectors were on. She was mentally recording every word that came out of my mouth, and anything I said could and would be used against me in the future.

She reached down and fisted my cock, eliciting a groan from deep in my throat. “What about this conversation is making you hard?”

“Uh…”

“Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth.”

I cleared my throat just before she squeezed me again from base to trip. I was pretty sure a little pre-cum oozed out onto her hand because she gasped.

“I think the idea of knocking you up is hot,” I confessed.

Then I felt bad.

Because I couldn’t knock her up. According to the doctor.

She was quiet, considering what I’d said. Too quiet.

“I’m sorry. You asked for the truth, and I… Look, it’s just very manly to think about making a baby with you. About planting my seed, as you so eloquently described.” When in doubt, go for flattery, right?

“I guess we can still pretend to try… Even if it’s not going to work,” she said.

She took that better than I thought.

“You mean right now?”

“I thought you wanted me to get up and make you coffee…but if you need my pussy again, well, then, who am I to deny you?” She looked at me with those lovely gray-green eyes.

“Damn, baby…” I climbed on top of her, settled between her legs and pressed the tip of my cock to her pussy lips. “You sure?”

Her sultry voice oozed out, “Pretend you’re trying to breed me, you stud muffin.”

Fuck. I know she’s joking but…something about it does things to me.

I never came so fast in my life.

maggie

“You look gorgeous tonight,” I said as she slipped into the booth across from me. Raine and I were dining at a quaint little Mexican place near my house, and I hoped our dinner would go well enough that I could invite her back for…you know, whatever came to mind.

“Thanks, so do you.” She folded her hands on the table and smiled. She looked a little nervous.

Raine was petite, probably not even five feet tall, and she had curves for days. She wore her jet-black hair in a bob with bangs. Her skin tone was a lovely shade of taupe and looked silky to the touch, and her eyes were the most curious shade of hazel-brown, upturned on the ends like a cat’s. She made them look even more striking by outlining them with thick black eyeliner.

“Is my face okay?” Her hands visibly trembled as she stared at me.

“Your face is beautiful. Sorry for staring—you’re just so exquisite. I was wondering about your skincare routine. Or maybe you were just blessed with flawless skin, I don’t know.” I matched her mood with my own nervous giggle.

My eyes trailed down her chest, taking in the silver chain with an R charm hanging around her neck. She wore a feminine floral peasant-style blouse that emphasized her beautiful decolletage. I couldn’t see now, since only her upper half appeared above the tabletop, but I thought she’d paired it with high-waisted khaki shorts.

She was so young and stylish. I hoped I didn’t seem hopelessly out of fashion in my navy pencil skirt, silk camisole and beige cardigan. I didn’t get a chance to change clothes after work.

I hadn’t had a first date for a while. The last six months, Leo and I had been focusing on getting pregnant, and we’d both taken a bit of a break from dating others. Each failed cycle brought more heartbreak, and now, after that doctor’s appointment…well, it didn’t seem like we had any hope of making a baby the old-fashioned way.

Now that I was back into the dating scene, I was seeing women a little differently, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to articulate the difference. I just knew Raine was gorgeous and highly intriguing, and though I had a lot on my emotional plate right now, I wanted to see where this went.

“You’re too kind,” she blushed ever so faintly, “but it’s probably just because I’m twenty-six. I don’t take care of my skin as well as I should, but I do try to wash my face at night instead of wearing makeup to bed. And sunscreen, of course.”

“Well, that’s more than I did in my twenties,” I admitted. “Now I’m turning forty in December, and I?—”

Her eyes widened.

“What?” I called her out on it. I’m a lawyer—that’s what we do.

“Sorry, I just…didn’t think you were that much older than me.” She raised a hand apologetically.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I assured her.

The server stopped by, and we both ordered margaritas—peach for me and raspberry for her—and some chips and queso. I lifted the menu, meeting her eyes over it. “Sorry, I don’t want this to be awkward, but…I have a million questions, so maybe we should figure out what we want to eat first.”

“Good plan,” she agreed with a lovely smile.

She seemed happy to let me lead the conversation. “Are you from Indiana originally, or did you move here for college?”

“I grew up all over the place. My dad was in the military. But we ended up in Texas.” She kept her upper body so stiff. I almost felt like she was giving off interview vibes. Hopefully she would relax when tequila hit her brain.

As if on cue, the server returned with our margaritas. They were huge!

“Wow! I hope I can drive home after drinking this.” I swirled my straw around the frothy mixture, then took a sip. “So good!”

When she tested hers, her face lit up. “Mmm! I approve.” She seemed to relax a little already and swiped one of the chips from the basket the server left through the cheese and brought it to her mouth.

“Oh—” I pointed to her chin. “You dripped just a tiny bit there.”

She laughed and dabbed at her chin with her napkin. “Did I get it?”

I smiled. “Yes. So what else should I know about you? You’re gorgeous, a good dancer, and you like cheese and margaritas. I mean, that’s enough for me, but there’s probably more, right?”

She had the most adorable giggle. “I mean, yeah, there’s a little more… I’m getting my MFA in design, costume design specifically. I’ve been designing fashions since I was a kid—just ask my mom. And I became a huge theater nerd in high school, so it only seemed natural to put the two together.”

“That’s amazing. Sounds a lot more exciting than being a lawyer!”

“Well, I’m sure being a lawyer is hard work. I bet just getting through law school was way harder than my MFA program.” She crunched on another chip and then carefully dabbed at her face again.

“If I had to sew something, I would probably break out in hives because I would be so nervous,” I admitted. “I’d much rather sweat it out while my client is cross-examined.”

We both had a laugh over that.

“Well, it sounds like we both followed career paths that suit us,” she said diplomatically. “My parents weren’t thrilled about me going into the arts, but I’m a thousand miles away, so who cares what they think?”

“You’re not close with your family?” It always made me sad to hear that, but I could relate. “I lost my dad a few years back, and I was a daddy’s girl, so I miss him a lot. I’m not as close with my mom or sister, but they both live in Indianapolis. I just never see them.”

“My parents are divorced,” she admitted. “I don’t really get along with my stepmom, so I don’t see my dad much. He moved to San Antonio, and my older brother went with him, back when I was in high school. My mom and I stayed in Austin.”

“I see. Well, they clearly passed along good genes,” I complimented her as my eyes raked up and down her face and chest again.

“Thank you, but I was adopted,” she admitted. “I don’t know much about my birth mom except she was Japanese.”

“Oh, wow, well, that’s interesting. Adoption is—” I had just taken a sip of my margarita and realized I was in danger of saying something that was, at best, trite and, at worst, offensive. So I chose not to pursue the completion of that thought.

“I never had a burning desire to meet my birth parents,” she explained. “I only know my mom was Japanese because I have a half-brother who contacted me a few years ago after we both did one of those DNA tests. I haven’t really pursued getting to know him or the rest of that side of the family. I did find out from the test that my dad gave me a wild mix of genes, from Irish to Indigenous American to a few countries in Africa.”

“I see…” This discussion had gone from flirty to serious, and I didn’t know how to get it back on the flirty track. Or if I even should. Serious doesn’t mean bad, right?

“So, do you and Leo have kids?” she asked.

And then I knew there was no coming back. A tear tried to sting at my eye, but I stubbornly willed it away. “Well, we were trying, but it turns out we’re not able to.”

“Oh…” She set down the chip she had just picked up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to?—”

“Well, I didn’t mean to—” I still felt bad about the adoption thing.

The server came back to check on us. Saved by the server…is that a thing?

“So…” She laced her fingers together and gave me a hard stare. “How long have you and Leo been poly? How’d you get into it?”

I smiled. She probably thought she was asking a truly probing question, but this was one we answered all the time. We were pretty open about it too. Both of our families knew—they thought we were nuts and always suspected we were on the verge of divorce—but they’d known for a long time.

“We started off as swingers,” I admitted, and that usually drew a shocked gasp from our audience. But she didn’t even flinch. “Then we realized we weren’t really into the fucking people without knowing them thing. We liked to get to know our partners. We had a couple friends we had…feelings for, you know? Stronger feelings than just friendship. I guess you’d call them romantic feelings. We didn’t even know polyamory was a thing.”

“And then what?” She was leaning forward, absorbing every word like oxygen. She was very interested in this, and I wanted to be completely honest with her about every aspect of my marriage.

“Well, I did some reading on the subject, like any lawyer would. Leo has done some reading too. He’s a cop—he has to be completely strait-laced at work, all buttoned up. We found there are a ton of cops in the swinging lifestyle—and nurses, teachers, all the public-servant-type jobs. They really like blowing off some steam on the weekends and just cutting loose. That was initially what attracted us to it, but we both have a geeky, intellectual side, I guess you’d call it. Yep, that’s right, Leo’s not just a dumb cop. He’s a bit of a nerd too. We started asking around and probing a bit deeper in our circle of friends, and it turned out a few of us had more polyam tendencies.

“We really liked how open and accepting they were. How we could freely discuss things with each other. And, well, Leo ended up dating one of our swinger friends a bit more seriously for a few years. Until she and her husband divorced, and she remarried someone who wanted to be monogamous.”

“Wow, wasn’t that hard? The breakup, I mean?”

“Yeah, it was,” I shared openly. “But, if you think about it, most relationships aren’t going to last forever. Whether they’re monogamous or polyamorous, you know? People grow and change. They move. Their needs fluctuate.”

“So what about you? Have you had many poly relationships?” she asked.

I smiled. “A few. I was involved with a couple for a while, but he was in the military, and they got transferred somewhere else. Then I had a girlfriend for a little bit. I always thought maybe Leo and I would fall in love with the same woman…you know, the stereotypical unicorn. But that has never happened.”

“No?” Her thin dark eyebrows arched with curiosity.

“Well, we’re still open to it…if it happens organically.”

“Organically,” she repeated.

“Yep. You just never know who’s going to come into your life and vibe with you, you know?”

She grinned. “Yeah, I think I do.”