Greetings from Sugartown (21 page)

Jake leans in and whispers to Sammy, just loud enough for the entire room to hear, “Your cousin’s kind of a bitch.”

“Shut the hell up, man.” Sammy punches Jake in the chest. He might look like his sister, but he didn’t get Ana’s tiny height. He was always kinda weedy as a kid, but when his balls dropped, he shot up as tall and wide-framed as Jack. “And she isn’t my cousin.”

“Whatever. This party blows,” Jake says, and walks towards the front door.

“Hey, dipshit, you’re lucky to be invited to a party as awesome as this. It’ll probably be the only invite you ever get from a pretty blonde, so shut the fuck up. And apologise to my princess now before I take your balls and turn them into fairy wings.”

“Sorry, Mr. Cade.” Jake trips all over himself in apology.
It’s pretty fucking funny
. I actually don’t mind the little punk-arse bastard, I just like to give him shit. “Sorry, Lil, your party doesn’t suck.”

“It’s okay, Jakey. Daddy says you’re just a meanie sometimes because your parents hate you, and you probably have a small doodle. Hey, do you wanna play cars and Barbies with me?”

Pepper smiles as she watches this exchange, then she tucks her sharpie in the front pocket of her ripped-up, tricked-out emo flannel shirt and runs after Sammy. “Hey Sammy, wait up.”

I grin, and wonder if he’ll ever notice the way she dotes on him when he’s not paying attention. The second he shows her even the slightest bit of kindness, she’s mean as a fucking cut snake. None of us have worked it out yet, other than that’s she’s a bit like a boy pulling the pigtails of the girl he likes. Jack pats Lil’s head as he and Holly walk past, and flop down in the booth opposite me. “Holy shit, these parties knock you out in the worst possible way.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I say, and slide the rest of my beer back.

Bob’s latest old lady, Sue, is chatting to Kristine and her newest conquest, a chef named Michael who took over from Antonio’s last year when they closed their doors. The three of them follow the kids outside. Bob, a man who once terrified me, but without whom my family wouldn’t be complete, pulls a chair up to the end of the table, and lowers his large frame down into it.

“We never did shit like this when Ana was little. Petting zoos and jumping castles?” He shakes his head in mock disgust and chuckles. “We used to set up the sprinkler in the backyard, throw a cake on the table, and watch the neighbourhood kids maul each other over the piece with the most icing.”

“That’s because you were a tight-arsed bastard father, Bob,” Holly deadpans.

“Yep, but at least I didn’t fork out a down payment on a small car for a birthday party.”

Holly rolls her eyes at Bob, and grabs my hand that’s resting on the table. The gesture makes my eyes sting, and my throat feel tight.
Jesus Christ. If the waterworks start flowing freely now, in front of Bob and Jackson, I’ll never live it down.
“Four years old. How does it feel, Daddy?”

“It feels like I’m gonna be going crazy in another ten years, and shooting every motherfucker that so much as looks in her direction.”

Jack laughs. “Try another four years, mate.”

“Now you know how I felt when you rolled into town on that piece of shit bike you own, and my little girl started following you around like a lovesick puppy.” Bob smacks his stubby against mine and stands up, walking towards the front door. Before he walks through it, though, he turns to face me. “Let me know how that shit works out for ya, Son.”

I place the empty beer bottle to my head and point to it. “Can someone please just jam this into my forehead right now? Just put me out of my misery.”

“Aww, but then we’d never get to see you hulk out on the first little punk that asks her out.” Holly pouts.

“Or the arse-whooping you’re going to give the guy that steals that first kiss,” Jackson adds.

“Or the time you hospitalise the guy that’s dry humping her on the couch when you come home early from the P&C meeting.”

I cover my ears and sing, “For the love of God, make it stop.”

“Oh, that one was good, Hols,” Jack says, kissing her forehead.

“I know, did you see? That vein in his temple even bulged a little.”

“Fuck you two.” I shake my head, and slide out from the booth.

“You wish, cunt-rag.”

“No, I really don’t,” I throw over my shoulder as I head toward the kitchen.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Holly croons to Jack. “I’ve seen the sex tape many, many times. He couldn’t keep up with you anyway.”

“Jesus woman. Exactly how
many
times?” Jack retorts. I chuckle to myself as I push through the doors into the quiet kitchen.

“There she is,” I whisper, as Ana turns towards me.

“Hey, people aren’t leaving already, are they? I came in here to box up the cake for everyone to take home, and then I just kinda got carried away with embellishments.” She points to the bench in front of her. There are at least twenty little triangular pink and white cake boxes lining the counter top. Each one contains soft pink tissue paper that’s fastened with a tiny pink peg, and sprinkled with glitter.

“Babe, there’s not even twenty people here.”

“I know, but once I started I just couldn’t stop. They looked so pretty, and I just want her birthdays to be perfect. My mum wasn’t alive to do these things, and Sammy didn’t have anything like that either. I want her to remember every detail, about all the birthdays, so she knows how special she is.” She shrugs, and tears up. “She’s my miracle baby. We’re never going to get another fourth birthday.”

After the bullet tore open her guts, Ana spent months in recovery. The few days in ICU were the hardest. I thought I’d lost her on that porch, but when they took her away in an ambulance with the sirens screaming, hope hit me like a shot between the eyes. It took them sixteen hours to remove the bullet that had ricocheted all around her insides. And another couple of days before she was awake enough to breathe, speak and eat for herself. And all of this occurred while I was knee-deep in pig shit, wading my way through the police investigation over the bikers that were shot dead in my living room. The fact that my door had been busted in and that they had my panicked triple-zero call on file was probably the only thing that saved me from going back to jail.

Self-defence. Case closed. Free to move on with your life,
Sergeant Davis had said. And I wish it had been that simple. We moved while Ana was still in the hospital, because I couldn’t take her back to that house of horrors. I couldn’t walk up the front path without seeing her lying lifeless on the porch.

The Doctors told us we’d never be able to conceive. For a long time, Ana was in denial; she stopped taking her pill—wasn’t much use to her, except to clog her system with hormones—and she fell into depression. I’d always wanted kids, a family, but none of that mattered if I didn’t have her by my side. It took me months to convince her that I wanted nothing more than to marry her. And then during our honeymoon on Daydream Island, we drank and fucked like rabbits on the deserted white sandy beach and came home happy, sunburned, and unbeknownst to us, carrying a little extra cargo. When Lil turned two we tried for another, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for us, and to be honest, I’m perfectly okay with that. I have my girls, I have Sammy and Pepper, and yes, even that little fucktard Jake. I have the family I longed for after losing my mum and my sister, and I couldn’t be happier.

“I just want her to be happy,” Ana whispers, lining the cake boxes up until they’re perfectly straight.

“Ana, she’d be happy if you set down a fucking half-eaten cupcake and stuck a plastic fairy in it.”

“Yeah, I know.” She reaches for a tea towel to wipe her hands on, but I snatch up her wrist, and lick the frosting from her fingers. She closes her eyes as my lips wander up the length of her arm, and stop at the gentle slope where her shoulder meets her neck. She bites her lip, and my Johnson just about beats its way out through my jeans. “We should go back out. We have guests. We don’t wanna be rude.”

“I don’t give a fuck that we have guests. The fucking queen could be outside, and I wouldn’t give a shit because my little girl—a girl we were never supposed to be able to have—just turned four, and right now my sexy-as-fuck wife is in the kitchen of her insanely successful franchised diner, she’s wearing that cute little red sundress I love, and I want to bury myself so deep inside her hot little pussy that she might have trouble walking straight after I’m finished with her.”

“You have issues, you know that, right?”

“Absolutely.”

I snake my hand under her dress, following the jagged edge of the scars marring her stomach. She hates when I touch them, but to me those scars are a reminder of her strength, her fight. And I celebrate them with kisses and brief touches whenever I can.

I slide my fingers inside her underwear. Slipping between her soft lips, I circle her clit and pinch, hard. Ana throws back her head, eyes closed, lips parted. I grab her chin with my free hand, and bring my lips down upon hers. She moans into the kiss, and rocks her hips into my hand. Kid’s birthday party or not—I lose all control. I lift her hips until she’s straddling me, and then I sweep the monstrosity of a cake that could feed an entire army and all the pretty boxes onto the floor and set her on the bench.

Ana pulls back and shrieks. “What the hell did you do? Do you know how long it took me to make all that, and you just—”

I take her face in my hands, and force her gaze away from the mess on the floor and up to mine. “Baby girl, shut up.”

She stares at me in stunned disbelief. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

I shrug, and give her a crooked smile. I know the dimples are popping out, and I know it’s melting the sudden frigidness in the room. She laughs, and glances down at the stainless steel bench she’s sitting on. There’s a piece that hadn’t quite made it to the floor, and she picks it up. “This is the very last piece of our daughter’s birthday cake.”

“Uh-huh,” I agree, wondering where the hell she’s going with this. Wondering if I’m about to find myself in even more trouble.

Ana grins up at me, and smooshes it in my face. Icing coats my cheek and neck, cake crumbles down my shirt. I wipe the sugary pink gunk from my face with the hem of my T-shirt. It leaves behind a filmy residue. I smell like fairy floss. “You’re gonna pay for that, baby girl.”

“Oh, really?”

I nod. “You’re going down.”

“No, Cade,” she challenges, placing her hands on top of my head, and pushing it south. “You can go down.”

I make out like I’m giving it some real thought, and then I swoop down and dig my hands into the cake that’s been relocated to the floor, making sure to collect a decent splodge of buttercream. Ana bolts off the table, but there’s nowhere to run. In two easy strides I have her tangled up in my arms. She kicks and bucks and screams, but I’m having too much fun with this to let her go. I hold my cake-covered hand out in front of her face.

“Don’t you dare …”

“Or what, baby girl? What are you gonna do?”

She screams as I take us down to the ground. I cop the brunt of the fall, but I quickly roll us so that she’s lying in the mess of demolished cake. She scrunches up her face as icing squishes beneath her and probably through her dress, but she’s laughing, so that’s a good indication I’m not going home with my balls in her handbag. “You are banned from my kitchen.”

I trace my cake-covered hand down her cheek, and push my fingers between her lips. She sucks them clean. She bites down, and then releases me when I growl, “Shut up and kiss me.”

Her back arches, her perfect tits pushing into my hard chest as I devour her mouth with my own. I push my hand against the ground beside her head, transferring my weight onto that one arm while my free hand unzips my jeans and releases my cock. Ana pulls her dress up around her waist, and makes light work of her own underwear, and then I’m sinking into her warm, slick heat.

“Fuck, baby,” I groan as I settle my weight on top of her, and start thrusting hard and fast, revelling in the ringing clap of our bodies slamming against one another. Her legs are wrapped around my hips, her heels pushing my arse closer, her rhythm mimicking my own and meeting me thrust for thrust. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

Ana traces her hands up the side of my face. I tilt my head, and kiss the swallows on her wrists, first one and then the other, and then her pleas become too much.
I have to get closer. I need to possess every inch of her. It’s never enough.
Never close enough.

I slide my hand beneath her arse and shift back on my haunches, bringing her with me so that she straddles my waist. I push the straps of her sundress off her shoulders, exposing her fucking beautiful tits, and taking one rosy upturned nipple in my mouth. I tease the tiny bud of flesh between my teeth as she rocks her hips against mine in a frenzied rhythm, both of us straining, seeking the jagged-edged ecstasy of release.

Freeing her nipple from my mouth, I pinch the other between my thumb and forefinger, and double my efforts to tip us both over the edge. “Come for me, baby girl.”

She does. With quaking thighs and breathy moans, she cries my name and comes around my cock, milking my own release with her hot, tight pussy. For a second we stay that way, wrapped up in one another, panting hard, and covered head to toe in sticky buttercream. Ana licks at the corner of my jaw, lapping up the frosting I hadn’t managed to wipe away. My thighs tremor from misuse as I lower us back down to the ground. I’m still rock hard, still inside her. She inhales a sharp breath, and pivots her hips up to meet mine.

“Fuck me. Again?” I groan. “I am getting too old for this shit, woman.”

“Hey, you started this. If you can’t keep up, then that’s not my—”

I cut her off by rearing back and thrusting in right to the hilt. “Oh,” she moans, as she writhes beneath me. “I take it back it. Now, fuck me harder.”

“Jesus Christ, I love it when you talk dirty,” I whisper in her ear, and give in to her commands.

Somewhere between her cries, and losing myself in another mind-blowing orgasm Ana stiffens beneath me. “Did you hear that?”