Page 46 of You Can Make Me (Carnival of Mysteries #28)

D enny

Five years later…

“Oh, fuuuck , baby.”

As promised, Cooper woke me most days in the best possible way. He was usually up before me doing his yoga stretches, and then he’d crawl back into bed with me, pull the covers over his head, and put his talented mouth to work. Best way to start a day ever.

This morning, he began by pushing my legs apart and brushing his fingers lightly over my taint and balls, making me jump and moan, my legs shaking so bad I could hardly stand it.

Then he administered long, slow licks up and down my shaft, which was extra sensitive from our lovemaking the previous evening in the shower.

I was truly living the dream.

When I thought I’d die from pleasure, he took my cock down his throat and hummed happily as he got to work with his hands, stroking in time with the movements of his tongue.

“Fuck, Cooper, baby?—”

He popped up from under the covers.

“You better keep it down unless you want company.”

His wicked smile as he pulled the sheet back over his head sent my heart to heaven. The rest of my body followed a few pumps later as a lazy orgasm washed over me, tingling down to my toes and up my spine until every muscle in my body relaxed in bliss.

Cooper crawled up my body, nibbling as he went, and then he shoved his salty tongue into my mouth, and one last wave of my orgasm shot up my shaft.

“God, that is just the best feeling in the whole damn world. Good morning, baby.”

“Good morning to you, dear husband. How did you sleep?”

“Great.” I slid my hands down the sides of his thighs as he straddled me, then up to cup his ass.

My fingers grazed his crease, and he squirmed.

My insatiable husband loved for me to be inside of him as often as possible.

I was a blessed man. I reached for his cock and stroked it lightly with my fingertips until he hissed. “I’d love to return the favor?—”

“Daddeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

A ball of chaos burst in the door of our bedroom and hurled itself onto our king-sized bed. The ball consisted of a four-year-old miracle.

“Well, good morning, Mister Heat Miser. How goes it, Mister Hundred and One?”

Our bundle of joy, Miles, with the brightest shock of red hair I’d ever seen, arrived on our doorstep a year after Cooper and I were reunited under the most peculiar of circumstances.

He was delivered to us by Pokey, the man who’d saved my life, with the instructions to not ask questions, only to hold to the promise I’d made the moment I’d awakened from my coma.

“I’ll do anything to be with Cooper again.”

Every gift from the carnival required a sacrifice, but Miles was the furthest thing from a sacrifice I could ever have dreamed. Instead, the carnival proved to be the gift that kept on giving. A beautiful son who loved his daddies exuberantly and?—

Waaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

“And that’ll be part two,” Cooper said with a wink. He climbed off me as I scooped up my little Heat Miser and started singing his favorite song as I tickled him ’til the hiccups started.

Cooper slid his boxers on and trotted down the hall to collect our second miracle, a dark-haired, often-sullen beauty named Miranda, after Cooper’s grandmother.

Our baby girl came about the good old-fashioned way: Cooper’s college-aged cousin decided to give up her child for adoption, and she asked the two of us to be the fathers.

This cousin had been the victim of an unspeakable act, and she wanted a second chance at life.

We were all about the second chances, so little Miranda joined our branch of the Harris clan.

Cooper had been the best thing that ever happened to me, but our little family blew me away with wonder every day.

I’d never thought I’d get the chance to be a dad—nor did I ever imagine a man would sweep me off my feet.

It just goes to show you that if you open yourself to love, the possibilities are endless.

Listen to me, all full of hippie-dippy happiness. Dane must have really rubbed off on me.

Once upon a time, I was a jaded, grumpy, skeptical guy grinding away as a detective for the Kern County Sheriff’s Department. I’d been divorced from two complicated women, and I had the best friends a guy could ask for.

That was before the carnival turned all of our lives upside down.

My rock-star buddy Ryan Wells found a Depression-Era musician and fell hard and fast.

My best pal on the force, Walter Muse, spent his life searching for a missing folk singer, only to find him forty years later and discover they were soul mates.

I met my beloved at a party for my other best pal, Gene, and had the mother of all bi-awakenings.

He rocked my world. Then I fucked up. He ghosted me, and then showed up in the middle of a crisis and nearly got himself killed.

I spent months nursing him back to health until we were able to get out of our own way and fall back in love.

We had a fresh start to make a new life together.

Then I died.

Well, mostly. My heart stopped a couple times.

All of my woo-woo grumbles weren’t enough to save me from a whopper of woo-woo what-the-fuckery.

The carnival took me in, turned the clock back, healed my battered body, and returned me to Cooper as an earlier version of myself.

Guess it really did have some type of fountain of youth and vitality

Served me and my non-believing ass right.

The guys had Retired Detective Dennis Hamilton declared deceased, and since I’d changed my will after my second divorce, all of my benefits were divided equally between Walter’s kids, Stacia and Steffan Muse. Good old Uncle Denny for the win.

The carnival sent me back with new identification that read Denton Harris, husband of investigative journalist Cooper Harris, aged twenty-two.

Yeah, you read that right. Cooper was the cradle-robber now.

Why so young, you ask?

Apparently, twenty-two was the age I’d been when my buddies and I were exposed to some nasty shit while serving abroad in the Marine Corps, and the carnival, in its infinite power, did a few laps around the interdimensional mulberry bush, and I popped out just before my body was contaminated, making sure Cooper and I had everything we needed for a nice, long, healthy life together.

Because the carnival had plans for us.

Turns out telling Errante Ame that you’ll do anything to have your true love once more means he’s gonna hold you to that.

Those closest to us knew the truth, but to the rest of the world, Cooper and I met at a rock show in Vegas and had been inseparable ever since.

Cooper came in cradling a very unhappy Miranda in his arms.

“Will you take her? She always settles down best for you. I changed her already. I’ll go get her bottle.”

He slid the six-month-old beauty into my arms, and she immediately quit wailing, her cries settling down to hiccups and whimpers.

“Daddy Denny? Why is Baby Randa so sad always?”

I put an arm around Miles and brought him close to my side. He played gently with her little toes and got that little worry crease between his brows.

“Your sister had a really rough time before she came to live with us. It’s our job to give her all the love we possibly can so we can heal that struggle she went through. Do you think you can help us do that?”

Miles beamed. “Of course I can, Daddy Denny. I’m full to bursting with love. I has so much inside me, Grandma Deb says so all the time!”

“She knows her stuff. She raised Daddy Coopy, so she knows all about kids who are bursting with love.”

“Daddy Coopy is bursting with love, too?”

I rubbed at Miles’s mile-high fiery hair and gave him a kiss right on top. We could cut his hair every week, and five minutes later it would be sticking up just like the Heat Miser’s.

“What is Daddy Coopy bursting with?” Cooper came in with a bottle for Miranda and a cup of coffee for me.

I wiggled my eyebrows at him as he handed me the mug, and he narrowed his eyes at me. I knew exactly what he was bursting with, since I hadn’t had a chance to take care of him. I would later, and he knew it.

“You behave,” he said, kissing my lips.

I grinned at him as he backed away from the bed, looking flustered.

“You got this? If I’m going to make it to my lecture this morning, I need to get in the shower.”

“Go, babe. We got this. Don’t we got this, little buddy?”

“We gots this,” Miles said. He took the bottle from me and, once I settled Miranda in between us in the bed, propped up on her wedge so her reflux wouldn’t get aggravated, Miles carefully held her bottle while she slurped it down.

He sang the song his nickname came from, and she stared up at him with stormy gray eyes.

They were polar opposites, but they were bonded more deeply than two unrelated siblings should be.

We didn’t know a lot about Miles’s background, but he’d been given to us for a reason.

I took a sip of my coffee and heard Cooper yelp in the shower. I needed to adjust the water heater again. It took forever to come on, but once it did, it would scald you if you weren’t careful. We couldn’t have that with our precious bundles.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I leaned over, keeping one hand on Miranda to keep her from rolling off the wedge.

“Oh shoot! We have a baby!”

“Duh, Daddy Denny. We have Mee-randa.”

I bent over and kissed her squirmy belly.

“I meant we have another baby. Auntie Stacia had a baby girl this morning!”

“What?! She had the baby?”

Cooper must have taken the quickest shower on record. He stood in the doorway with a towel around his waist, using another to dry the curls that now fell nearly to his waist.

“Her name is Stella.” I grinned at him and tried not to think about what we’d been up to just a short time ago.

“ Stelllaaaaaa! You know I’m going to say that every time,” he said with a laugh before disappearing back into the bathroom.“We’ll have to put together a package. I can’t wait to see her next month.”