Cade...
Being with Sophia, makes me feel like a king. Having dinner in the intimate French cuisine restaurant in Bath on Friday evening, to walking hand in hand along the Colonnades and enjoying all of the antique shops in Bartlett Street during Saturday; I felt like a king upon his throne with her beside me. I needed this time alone with her. I needed Sophia constantly with me this weekend, because whenever I looked at her, I saw a wonderful life standing right in front of me. Whenever I needed to talk, she listened. Whenever I needed to stay quiet, she understood. We have cuddled. We have laughed. We have even cried a little. We have loved and made love. We have made plans. We have discussed our dreams. But what is most important, is that I am doing all of those things, with her. They say that the truth can set you free, and in my case, I think it might have. For so long, for far too painfully long, my mother took all of her suffering, out on me. Although I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive her for that. With understanding why she treated me like that, comes an enormous amount of emotional freedom. I don't want to end up like my mother—functioning on the outside, dead on the inside.
I want to let the pain out, to allow happiness to come in.
I need happiness in my life.
I need love in my life.
Sophia gives me both of those things.
And I want to give them both so lovingly back to her.
Which is why I am standing here, watching her gush like an excited child at the sight of my three race horses. I watch how she curiously and enthusiastically strokes their foreheads and their velvety muzzles in an affectionate and kind way. All the attention, my thoroughbreds simply lap up. My most recently bought horse, has particularly taken a shine to my girl. He keeps prancing and snorting in his stable, his head raised high and his ears pricked forwards; trying to get more of Sophia's idolatry attention. "What's this handsome chap called?" she brightly asks, as he keeps rubbing his nose against her shoulder.
"Playboy." I tell her, leaning against the wall that's just beside the stable.
Giggling as he persistently keeps rubbing her, Sophia gifts me with one of her broadest of grins. "A befitting name, it would seem." She laughs again, turning around to now give Playboy her undivided attention. "He is especially beautiful." She coos, caressing the crest of his neck with such sweet appreciation. "Aren't you, boy?" She playfully now runs her fingers through his black forelock, to which Playboy softly snorts.
Still leaning against the wall, I watch the adorable illumination on Sophia's delighted face. I quietly become mesmerised by all that she does. From the way she girlishly giggles and excitedly stands on her toes to reach Playboy's thin and wispy mane, to how she blows away the baby fine strands of her own black hair that frame her perfectly oval face as a sudden December breeze coldly whips itself all around us. It is then that I am struck with either a moment of complete clarity, or a moment of complete madness; either one feels fantastically right to me. "Get your sexy little ass over here?" Reaching out for her, I wait for Sophia to place her hand in mine. The second that she does, I tuck her snugly into my coated chest. For just a moment, I get lost in the beauty of her slight smile and her widened grey eyes. Using my loving finger, I trace where her smile so beautifully still is, needing to profess my feelings with a desperately soft whisper. "Marry me?"
A look of complete panic, joy and excitement falls upon her flawless face. "Sorry?" She can't seem to find anymore words, too stunned to say anything else.
But I have plenty of words. I have plenty more to say. So I start saying each and every meaningful one of them. "I love you, Sophia. I know you might think that I am rushing things, but I don't think I am. I have been waiting my whole life to feel how I do when I'm with you. You and me, we work. I'm in love with you. Madly, madly in love with you. I don't want to wait. I love you now. I want to marry you now." My breaths are short, short with such eagerness. Sophia's gorgeous ashen eyes suddenly become glazed with happiness and elation. I keep staring into them, seeing every one of my dreams held within those glassy grey spheres of hers. Such a beautiful moment is being exchanged between us. A moment that could honestly stop time if it so wished. This is a moment where nothing else matters. Only this precious and beautiful moment is all that we should be aware of; locked in a bubble of complete togetherness. Leaving an invisible trail of adoration along her jawline with my thumb, I try to prompt an answer from Sophia, using only my hopeful smile.
Her quiet voice soon reaches my ears. "I don't really know what to say?" Her laugh is almost as quiet as her voice, still a little too stunned to be any louder.
Smirking down at Sophia's exquisitely dumbfounded face, I am now the one to laugh. "A yes will do." I confidently tell her.
With a yearning look spreading all over her face, she starts lightly bouncing on the balls of her welly-wearing feet. Her excitement is literally brimming over, about to spill out into our surreal reality. Unable to contain it any longer, Sophia is soon jumping up and down in front of me. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She's half crying, half laughing. "This is absolute madness." She sobs with an elated smile.
Laughing as I try to keep hold of my very animated fiancée, I inadvertently am now bouncing too. "Madness has never felt so good!" I freely say, holding her tight and feeling more happy than I ever could have imagined. This feels right. This feels righter than right. So I hold her even tighter, zealously kissing the parts of Sophia's slender neck that aren't covered by her quilted jacket.
Warmly nestled against me, Sophia starts thinking aloud. "What kind of wedding shall we have? A spring or a summer one? Oh, the flower choices for those seasons...I won't even know where to begin!"
Attentively listening, whilst my loving arms fully encircle her, I quietly throw in my thoughts. "How about a New Year one?"
"What? This New Year?" Sophia warily asks, sounding slightly muffled against the padding of my coat.
Knowing that it's only three weeks away, I keep my reply so purposely calm. "No time like the present." I say with a devil-may-care lilt.
That is when the love of my life draws back slightly to look up at me, a flicker of excitement shining brightly in her pretty grey eyes. "We are both certifiably insane, but a New Year wedding it is." A gorgeous smirk settles upon her softly cushioned lips. "And...you need to meet my dad." She so sweetly adds to the excited chaos.
After all that has happened, meeting Sophia's dad doesn't fill me with dread. Dinner with her parents had already been arranged for next week anyway, which is why I'll make damn sure that I have all my affairs in order by then. I want a date for when I officially part ways with Lapley Law Firm. I want me and Sophia to take a look at the farmhouse in Coates. I also want to hire someone to organise our New Year wedding. I want all of that, so I can show Sophia's parents just how serious I am about wanting to share my future with their truly wonderful daughter. "I can't wait to meet him." Kissing the top of Sophia's head, I smile at what I've just so happily said. I really can't wait to meet the man who is one half of the reason why his daughter exists. For that, I want to shake his fatherly hand. I want to genuinely thank him for bringing Sophia into his world, so that one day, she would eventually come into mine. I've not yet met this man, but I know he will be a kind and loving man. I have listened to how fondly Sophia speaks about him. He seems to be everything that both of my fathers never could be. One was a cruel and violent nameless human being. The other a gutless and spineless status-grabbing good for nothing who was so hell bent on becoming part of the Lapley family, he even took on its name when he married my mother. So yeah, I really look forward to meeting the male role model who has been forever present in my future wife's life.
"How shall we celebrate our engagement?" Sophia asks, sexily swaying from side to side in my arms.
Needing to have my lips upon hers, I speak through my softly given kiss. "A quick fumble in the hay?" My joke is smothered by a succession of many more soft kisses.
Giggling, Sophia playfully kisses me back. "Maybe there is two playboys around here?"
Taking her bottom lip greedily between my teeth, I answer her in a gravelly deep and erotic way. "My playboy days are very much behind me. Whereas you, you're most definitely in front of me." Pressing my straining erection hard against her, I then teasingly bite down on her sexy lower lip again.
Sophia sighs, shyly trying to look all around us. "Stop, someone might see." Although her traitorously receptive body is telling me to do anything but stop.
No one seems to be around, so I seize the opportunity by pulling Sophia into an empty stable. Pulling the lock across, I quickly start undoing my jeans. "You're turning me into a horny little teenager." My jeans and boxer shorts are now tautly ruffled down by the cheeks of my ass.
Sophia is also pulling her jeans and knickers down, trying not to laugh as she does. We both seem to get a rush from how we make each other feel, a rush from the things that we spontaneously do together. "Bloody hell it's cold!" She grimaces, shivering as the December chill collides with her now partially unclothed skin. "You need to warm me up."
Placing both of my hands on her cooled down hips, my eyes wickedly narrow. "I intend to." Sinking my fingers into her sexy skin, I carefully step forwards, causing Sophia to step backwards before she settles against the inner wall of the stable. Bending my knees slightly, I position myself; now aroused and erect enough to glide right into my sexy little lady as I passionately lick and nip her outstretched neck. Quietly groaning, I thrust in and out of Sophia in a slow and sensual way.
Deep.
Unhurried.
Horny.
To muffle her own erotic groans of satisfaction, Sophia buries her face into the downy shoulder of my coat as she grips tighter onto my waist. No longer feeling so cold, we make slow and abandoned love against the stable wall. Our mouths, tongues and fingers, are all part of the amazing sex that we are now having. Just as I'm about to pick up the pelvic pace, I hear my name being called. "Lapley?" Heavy footsteps come closer and closer. "Lapley?" So is the familiar voice.
"Who's that?" Sophia whispers, now completely still in my hold.
Beyond aroused and frustrated as hell, I gently pull out of her before dragging my boxers and jeans up with a very annoyed sigh. "It's Charlie, he owns this place."
Heaving up her knickers and jeans, Sophia now looks all flustered. "Oh." She mumbles, quickly pulling up her zip. "Thank god he didn't catch us." She mumbles again, looking sexily sheepish now.
Grabbing her hand, I'm smirking as I unlock the stable door. "Charlie, good to see you." I'm acting like it's the most natural thing in the world for me to be seen leaving an empty stable with a flustered Sophia holding my hand. "I'm just showing my fiancée around."
Charlie nods, a sly and knowing kind of a nod. "Your fiancée? How marvellous to meet you." His wrinkled, knowing eyes are now fully fixed on mine, waiting for me to formally introduce Sophia to him as he politely bends forward to shake her hand. "This is Sophia Hale, and this is Charlie Chatsworth." I say, warmly glancing in my girls direction before I chat some more with Charlie. "The boys all look really well." I now look at my three thoroughbreds, who all seem very interested in us.
Nodding hard, Charlie agrees. "They are indeed. Between them all, we are racking up some wins at the race meets." His small eyes soon slide back across to Sophia. "Do you ride? You look like you could handle a thoroughbred between your legs."
Sophia actually snorts, then starts to shyly giggle, but I am less than impressed with Charlie's comment. Innocently said or not, I don't like it. But before I have time to express just how unimpressed I actually am, Sophia is suppressing that lovely giggle of hers and trying to seriously reply to Charlie. "I used to ride a lot, but not so much these days."
"Then we must do something about that." In his very posh and bolshy voice, Charlie is obviously inviting Sophia to come and ride at his place. At the grand old age of sixty one, he is a spritely sort who loves the countryside almost as much as he loves women half his age. "I can always tell a woman who likes to ride." He now throws her one of his charming smiles, before giving me a thoroughly annoying one.
"Well, I do like a good ride now and again." If Sophia thinks that the naughty little twitch around her mouth and the just as naughty glint in her eyes has gone unnoticed by me and my semi-there erection, she is most certainly wrong.
"Anyway Charlie, we had better be going." Bringing my arm right around her waist, I throw Sophia a I-know-exactly-what-you-are-doing look. "We have lots to be getting on with." I possessively add, giving her waist a tempting little squeeze.
"Lovely to meet you, Charlie." Sophia broadly smiles his way, then pulls herself free from my horny hold. "And you, boy...I'll see you soon." Playboy is now the one who is getting all of Sophia's sweet attention, as she lovingly pets his nose and then gives him lots of affectionate little kisses on his velvety muzzle.
"I have mile long grass gallops, a Polytrack gallop and three miles of horse walks, so anytime you fancy taking Playboy out, you just let me know." Charlie genuinely smiles back at Sophia, who is now literally beaming from ear to ear at the prospect of riding Playboy.
Bringing herself back beside me and giving me an excited little cuddle, she is so very keen to reply. "I would absolutely love that. Thank you."
Seeing her face light up in the way that it does whenever she gets excited about something, actually makes my heart skip a grateful beat. This fun loving and upbeat beauty, is now my fiancée. Which is why I have this urgent need to buy her a ring. I want everyone to see that Sophia is going to be my wife. Every single time that she looks down at the ring that I will shortly buy for her, I want to see that precious smile of hers. "Let's go, beautiful...I'm buying you a ring."
That's when I see yet another one of Sophia's illuminating smiles. "You are?"
With a high and smug chin, I proudly nod. "I am."
Wrapping both of her arms around my forearm, Sophia looks absolutely thrilled. "This is turning out to be the best day ever." Her head then rests on my shoulder, cuddling up against me.
I think my girl is right. I seem to be making a lot of sound decisions lately—no more drink and women, leaving Lapley Law Firm, having nothing more to do with my mother, asking Sophia to move in with me, then asking her to be my beautiful wife—yeah, I think this is turning out to be the best day ever.
**OH MY....WHAT A FUN CHAPTER TO WRITE!!! 😜
I AM ALSO LOVING THIS LIGHTER AND FREE-ER SIDE TO CADE, TOO!
I HOPE YOU LOVELY READERS ARE TOO**