Being Their Baby (33 page)

Charlie nodded slowly and repeated what she’d told him.

Josh seemed a little more rigid all of the sudden, but then he ran his hand over her leg.

Sophie shifted, murmured something sleepily, and then began to softly snore again.

“Well, at least she wants this and is brave enough to admit it,” Josh finally said. “We can’t go back and fix the way she grew up. This is really all we can do, and all we know how to do, but we can do it well!” He looked down. “I’m gonna put her to bed. She’s zonked.”

“
I’m
gonna put her to bed, thanks,” Charlie replied crisply, feeling strangely possessive.

“Charlie, you probably shouldn’t get up at all. You’re yay-close to looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Just let your healthier, stronger, more attractive, and better-in-every-way brother do the job,” he told him, scooping Sophie gently into his arms. She hung as limp as a ragdoll when Josh stood up.

Charlie grunted and turned his body so he could watch as Josh laid her in her bed gently as if she were made of glass, and then quietly pulled the side of the crib up, closing her in with the bed rails. Then Josh spent way too long looking at her. “Don’t crawl in there with her,” Charlie ordered.

Josh looked a little torn. “But—”

“Don’t do it. She’s not having a good-girl weekend. This is a bad-baby weekend. She’s being punished. She crashed your car, the car you love, may I remind you?”

Josh shrugged, looking disappointed, like a kid who was just informed that they couldn’t eat ice cream for breakfast. “I know.”

Charlie lifted his eyebrow.

Josh walked back toward the couch, shrugging. “I do! I know. I totally get the whole mixed-signals thing and why it’s bad. She’s just my kryptonite. Not a bad kind of kryptonite, but like—”

Charlie grinned and raised his hand to silence Josh from further explaining his stupid analogy. “I got it. She makes you feel like a lusty teenager. Awesome. I
am
still her daddy, though, unless she tells me otherwise or moves the bill to you. So her butt still belongs to me.”

“I don’t expect her to move the bill to me. And don’t worry about me trying to be a girl-hog. You’ve shared Liz with me, I’ll share Sophie with you… as long as she’s amenable to the idea, of course. The lifestyle’s not for everybody.” Suddenly he paused and looked toward the door. “You’re… still gonna share Liz, right? Even after the… you know, marriage?”

Charlie sighed with exasperation. “Yeah. Like I could stop her, anyway. Besides,
I’m
certainly not going to sub for her. I love her, but I have hard limits like everyone else. The only thing that will change is the fact that we can all go out at the same time without it looking weird. And she’ll be a Hobbes.”

Josh let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Just checking.” He took his place on the couch again and they watched the hockey game until the next commercial. “So, like… How many times was the charm?”

“I only had to ask her twenty-five times. Buying the ring, though, seemed to get me in the end-zone. And the agreement that she gets to handcuff me to the bed twice a year and gets to go on top once a month and on her birthday.” He loosened the tie he was wearing. “It was a tough bargain, but I had to seal that deal before she started laying down the kibosh on the whole idea.”

“You probably should have tried out the ring earlier. Made me realize you might have been serious,” Liz said, appearing in the doorway with her arms crossed. She was grinning like the wicked vixen that she was.

“
Serious
? Woman, I did everything short of clubbing you on the head and carrying you back to my cave,” Charlie grunted. “If I thought a rock was going to help me that much, I would have gone to the mines of Africa and chiseled you out one myself by now.”

Liz gave a quiet laugh and then walked over to Sophie. Her stilettos were muffled by the soft rug around the crib. She leaned over and brushed Sophie’s bangs to the side. “Poor baby. She looks so tired,” Liz murmured, and then turned around and came up behind the sofa in front of the nursery television. “Are you both going to watch the whole hockey game from the
nursery
?” she chided. “I don’t think so. There’s a television downstairs. This TV is Sophie’s.” She glanced at Josh. “I have something I need to discuss with your brother anyway.”

Josh grumbled and said, “Fine, fine. I know when I’m not wanted. Apparently, I’m still in the doghouse.”

“Pool house,” she corrected smartly as Josh got up and walked by her. “You should get some sleep, too, you know.”

“Why?” Josh spun around like a frisky tomcat, then sauntered up to her. “You want to put me down for a nap, sexy lady? Because I’d be open to that…”

Liz turned him back toward the door and slapped him on the ass. “Maybe later.
If
you’re a good boy.”

“Under those limitations, I’ll never get laid again!” Josh laughed as he walked out of the room.

Liz turned to Charlie and slowly approached until she was straddling his lap. Lord almighty; he might have been screwing her for over seventeen years, but Liz still made him hard as a rock. “Want practice for the honeymoon?”

Charlie glanced over at the crib, even though Sophie was lightly snoring. “Can’t,” he said grudgingly. “For starters, we can’t wake up our baby girl. Second, I fucked up my shoulder really bad.”

Liz leaned over and discovered the icepack between his shoulder and the back of the sofa. “Poor baby. That’s okay, though. I know something that will make you feel better.” She dropped down to the floor on her knees before him and reached for the fly on his pants.

“Liz…” Charlie sighed, already relieved. “You’re the best.”

Chapter Fifteen

Sophie woke up to the sound of Charlie’s snoring. He had a low, breathy sort of snore that was different from his brother’s. She thought he might be sleeping behind her. Since he became her daddy, whether he liked it or not, she slept with him often. Sometimes he would pleasure her with his fingers if she rubbed her bottom against his groin enough…

But he wasn’t there. She opened her eyes, annoyed at not finding anything to rub against, and wondering why she felt so constrained, why her legs felt so weird and why her bottom was in so much pain. She saw what seemed like bars in front of her. When her eyes finally focused, she could see that the bars were wooden spindles.

She was in her crib. Ah, now it was all coming back.

She was in the middle of a bad-baby weekend. She felt weird because she was spanked raw and had a plug spreading her anus and was put into a thick diaper.

She sat up and spied Charlie—his head was lolled onto the back of the sofa where he had been reading to her. She pushed the mattress down until she was on her knees. She looked back and forth, trying to figure out how to get the side of the crib down so she could get out and go to the bathroom to pee.

Unable to figure out where the lever was that could pull down the side, she began to climb out.

“Stop right there.”

Sophie dropped back down onto the mattress, startled by the noise. She looked up and saw Liz standing just outside the crib. “I need to pee,” she told her, hoping that the scolding look she was getting wasn’t a precursor to a spanking.

“You don’t get to speak. You’re a baby, aren’t you?”

She frowned. “But—” Liz’s look silenced her before she could actually get a full whine out.

“You have a diaper, baby muffin,” Liz reminded her. “Use it.”

Fear clenched at Sophie’s throat so suddenly that for a moment she felt like she was choking. Knowing she couldn’t get a word out, she whimpered and curled her body around a pillow.

“Baby? Are you okay?” Liz asked, reaching over the edge of the crib and running her hand down the length of Sophie’s leg. “Sophie, honey? You need to breathe.”

Sophie was presently hyperventilating. She couldn’t use a diaper—and not just because it was humiliating, because the idea twisted her stomach with worry. It made her feel uneasy, even queasy.

“Charlie?” Liz called across the room, and the snoring stopped.

Charlie was soon there, looking a little startled.

“I told her to use her diaper, she paled and then balled up into the fetal position. That’s not the usual response,” Liz explained, concern etched on her features. Sophie still couldn’t move; she felt a little frozen.

Charlie lowered the side of the crib. Apparently, the lever was at the bottom of the crib where Sophie couldn’t reach from the inside. He sat down next to her, and then drew her onto his lap. “She’s okay, Liz. We’re working on it. Bring me her pacifier, would you?”

He snuggled Sophie close to his chest for a second before the pacifier was put to her lips. “Sweetie—you know we’re going to take care of you? It won’t hurt you to depend on us for your every need. Even this one. This is a huge step.”

She pressed her face into Charlie’s chest. She was basking in his warmth and also completely astounded by what he wanted. She wanted it too, in a way, which surprised her. She wanted that sort of undivided care and unconditional love like you’d need during this little exercise of humility.

“Let’s get your mind off of it,” he suggested. “I want you to use your diaper, but wait until you’re ready.”

Liz picked her up like she was a child, and brought her over to the sofa where Sophie was given a new, cold bottle full of juice and they put on a Disney movie.

Charlie was talking quietly to Liz on the other side of the room, and Sophie blushed, guessing that he was explaining that Sophie was just a big ball of crazy.

Liz gasped about something, which only confirmed it.

She frowned, the shame within her feeling like it was folding itself into a bulky mass in her gut. She tried to rub her thighs together like she sometimes did when she was nervous, but the diaper’s bulk made that pretty much impossible.

She sighed and hunkered down to watch the movie, hoping it would ease her mind off of how much she needed to pee or the nervous feeling that was creeping underneath her skin.

Charlie sat down next to her and pulled her onto his lap again, kissing the top of her head and wrapping her up in his thick, strong arms. “Drink your juice,” he said, picking up the bottle and pulling the pacifier out of her mouth with his other hand.

She didn’t want to, and made an unhappy noise, trying to turn her lips away from the rubber nipple on the bottle. Juice was nothing but a diuretic!

“Sophie, you need to drink something. You only drank a few ounces before you went to sleep,” he said, sounding like the concerned daddy that he was. But when she refused again, he started counting down. “Three… Two…”

Fearing what he had planned for her on “one,” she tilted the bottle up and took a suck from it.

“Good girl. I tell you what, munchkin; we’ll take out the plug when we change your diaper,” he negotiated.

At least it sounded like a negotiation, only she wasn’t allowed to argue or negotiate
back
. She pinched her face with frustration. The plug wasn’t so bad. She could definitely tell it was there, and she couldn’t say it was particularly comfortable, but it didn’t hurt like it had when he’d first put it in. The plug just had the power to bring her attention to that part of her anatomy.

Or at least it did before her bladder decided to do double-time. She wondered how long she could hold it.

Liz sat down then, keeping Sophie snuggled up between them. Every time one of them shifted, jostling her body, she wanted to scream. All of her muscles seemed to tense around her swollen bladder. She was drinking slowly, only a drop at a time, but even at this pace she was sure the urgency was increasing more every second.

Eventually, she began to whimper, her face reddening. She made a quick, sudden move, desperate not to use the diaper and to make it into the bathroom, trying to jump up and over the back of the sofa, but Liz was able to catch her by her elbow. Of course, the woman wasn’t happy, and her grip was so tight, Sophie couldn’t wrench free. She began to shed tears again, unable to help herself, the hopelessness of her situation finally revealed.

Liz softened instantly and pulled her back onto her lap, planting kisses on her cheeks.

Charlie gave Sophie a serious look and grumbled, “Nice try. Any more sudden escape attempts to use the big-girl potty, and your
thighs
are going to get spanked, and I don’t care if they still have color people can see on Monday. Your friends could just see what happens to naughty girls in this house.”

Sophie tried to squirm off of Liz’s lap. That was also a no-go; Liz held her tight to her breast, and then rubbed Sophie’s tummy, pressing down on her bladder. Sophie began to sob when she did that, the discomfort and humiliation too intense for just tears and sniffles, and she voided her bladder. It only made her cry harder, ashamed and even alarmed by the warmth and wetness flooding her diaper.

Some part of her was sure that, as soon as she actually used her diaper, they were going to get angry or disgusted with her. At best, they’d make fun of her. She squinted her eyes and prepared herself for the worst.

Unexpectedly, Liz squeezed her tighter and kissed her forehead. “You’re such a good girl, Sophie. I know that was really, really hard for you.”

She held and petted her for a long time before Charlie, pulling the icepack from his shoulder with a pained groan, said, “I’ll go change her.”

“No, you’re not.
I’m
changing her,
you’re
going downstairs and putting on your shoulder brace,” Liz lectured like a put-out housewife. “You’re moaning and groaning around here like an old man. Did you even take an ibuprofen yet? Or are you just sitting there, basking in your shoulder pain like you invented it again?”

Sophie wiped her eyes and saw Charlie frown at the lecture. “Fine. I’ll take something,” he finally muttered after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times, trying to find a platform to argue from and not being able to find one.

She was sorry for hurting his shoulder earlier, but watching Charlie get lectured by Liz made her feel joy for the first time since Josh took her up against the wall early that morning.