No Ordinary Love – Quarantine Chronicles

Rick – Week 1

"Yes, Chonne, I know!"

"But, Rick..."

"Nah...don't Rick me, woman."

Cooing, her voice soft, breathy, Michonne pleads, "Come on, baby, you know it's the right thing to do."

"Ahhh...shit! Maybe I don't care." I mumble through a cloud of lust, my grip on her hips getting tighter.

"But you do."

"But maybe I don't. I just...Oh fuck..."

"I know. But it is the right thing to do. And you always do the right thing." Michonne whispers in that sugary sweet tone of hers, while she winds and drops her hips. "That's why I love you."

Sighing, I have to exhale an exasperated breath. This woman knows how to get to me, and with her hands flat on my chest, looking down at me with her dark eyes, blinking her long lashes at me while she rides me, she knows how to bend me to her will. Right now, I would do any fucking thing she asked me to do if she keeps grinding her ass down on me like that. How could I not? Even on this cool early March day in Georgia, where the wind is still delivering a breeze through our open bedroom windows, our bodies are fused together, sweaty and sticky from our lovemaking.

Michonne is gently caressing my face now, her elegant fingers sifting through the hairs on my face, as her hair blankets around us just before she drops her face to mine and kisses me. Her tongue dancing across mine, her lips nipping and sucking. All while keeping up a slow, sinful pace, a sensuous back and forth just before she whimpers softly that she's coming. I can feel her warm body tense, muscles tighten beneath her beautiful skin. Her orgasm is strong, whipping through her with rhythmic pulsing, a carnal theft of her last bit of strength. Increasingly, her canal is spasming, drenching me in her essence as she moans into my mouth.

I swallow every single one of her pleasurable cries. Taking them in, savoring the tiny moans that fall from her sexy lips as I grab a handful of her ass, and hold her steady to push up into her. Thrusting, digging the heels of my feet into the bed, I hold her right where I want her, and explode inside of my wife as my growls of pleasure create a satisfied chorus among her dwindling mewls.

Wrapping her limp form into a solid hug against my chest, I'm intent on maintaining our connection. I don't even want to leave from inside of her. It's my favorite place on earth. Warm, soft, wet. We've been together so much that her womanhood curves perfectly to the fit of my dick.

Snuggling her face underneath my chin, Michonne mumbles softly, her full lips puckering with the movement, causing my cock to stiffen again at the simple thought of the decadent things she can do with them.

"We have to let him stay, Rick. His parents are still in Europe and he's too young to be alone. The news is too sketchy on when they will be allowed back into the country. It's bad in Spain."

Lifting her face to mine with a nudge from my index finger, I kiss her forehead and grudgingly agree. "I know, Chonne. You're right."

Grinning up at me, she narrows her soulful eyes for a moment as though she's checking to make sure that I'm actually giving in so easily. "Really?"

"Really. Just gotta make sure there's some rules to this."

Raising her eyebrows high, nearly meeting her hairline, she responds, "Rules?"

"Yeah, rules."

"Little late for that though right? He's practically lived with us for the last eleven years."

"It's different now though, Chonne. You can't tell me that you haven't noticed."

"Noticed what exactly?"

"Cameron is seventeen. I don't want him getting any ideas about Judith."

Forming her lips into an 'o' Michonne nods, clearly understanding what I'm getting at. "Oh that. Well, Rick...she's-"

"Too damn young for that shit."

Playing with my hair, turning and twisting the curls through her fingers, Michonne seems to be taking her time, thinking, before she speaks again. "She's like me, Rick. Cameron is like you. It's..."

Lifting to rest my back on the sturdy wood headboard, I keep my wife anchored in my lap, as I tilt my head to try and study her face in the dim darkness of our bedroom. "What are you talking about, Chonne?" Attempting to ease from my lap, to steal her heat from me, even as I've already fallen from her depths, Michonne tries to push against my hold and scoot back. I'm not having that. Using both arms, I band them around those curvy hips of hers, and hold her still right where I want her. She wiggles in my lap, and the fleshy stickiness of the lips of her womanhood cover my cock, and almost steal my train of thought as I momentarily close my eyes and savor the feel of her. "No, sit still. Come here and tell me what you're talking about." I chuckle, realizing that she's trying to avoid getting into a discussion that she was adamant to have not even ten minutes before.

Michonne doesn't follow orders well though, doesn't even pretend to move her lips and answer me. Petulantly she drops her head backwards, and crosses her arms over her breasts. Now why would she go and do that? She knows I love her breasts. Pulling at her arms to unthread them, I decide to use a little of her own medicine on her.

With her head angled back, I focus my kisses first on her neck, licking and sucking the skin there. Her silky flesh is so sweet with the smell of our lovemaking still perfuming every inch. Sucking harder, I elicit a soft moan from her, punctuated by a slow roll of her head to the side. I know my baby, she likes it. And as she inches her body backward, resting on her palms that are now outstretched behind her on my thighs, I travel my licks and sucks to her breasts, nuzzling my face into the plump cushions. My excitement grows as I'm admiring the beauty of her walnut colored skin. The striking appearance of her large round areolas, a cherry colored chocolate, just a kiss darker than the rest of her. The nub of her nipples, turgid, stiff, even darker still, press into the flatness of my tongue as I lap at her, passion building inside of me, a strong distraction even as I try to coax and prod her.

With a mouth full of her right nipple, my voice rumbles against the mound, "Tell me what you mean."

"Rick..."

"Tell me." Huffing out a staggered breath, Michonne seems to be giving in. Scrunching her pretty face up, she giggles a little, flirty and sweet, sounding every bit the young girl I remember growing up with, fell in love with, and resembling very much our very own young girl who's sleeping only a few doors down. I'm instantly struck, confronted by the truth of what she's trying to say. And I don't like it. Pulling my head back for a second, the visual is nearly fatal, a cold dampening of the fire I was rekindling between us. "What...?"

With a click of her tongue against her teeth, Michonne seems to be taking pity on me, and lifts to graze her fingers over the frown gathering between my eyes. "Baby, you telling me you didn't notice the similarities? At all?"

"I-"

"Judith is fourteen, Rick. Cameron is seventeen. We were-"

"Not Judith."

"Yes, Rick. She's not going to be your baby forever. Just because she still sleeps with that wooby in her bed, doesn't mean she's still the same baby girl that couldn't sleep without it. She's menstruating-"

Shaking my head, I'm trying to free my mind of the visuals that my wife is trying her best to present to me. Dammit! Not my baby! My only little girl? My precious baby girl? The same little girl who basically lived in my arms, preferring me to carry her than walking until she started first grade. "Nevermind, Chonne, nevermind! I don't want to talk about this."

"If Cameron is going to wait this quarantine out here with us, then we need to talk about it."

Dodging my eyes from the piercing gaze of hers, I try to wrestle with what she's saying, but I'm dumbstruck. How have I missed this? Yes, Cameron has spent an inordinate amount of time with our family. How could he not? He's around the same age as our older boys, and with him working on Michonne's old show, Zombie Slayer, they easily formed a close bond. Cameron kind of just fell in with our tribe of kids. It made sense. And in a family of all boys and only one girl, I suppose it eluded me that he and Judith might have formed a connection as well.

But now that Michonne has mentioned it to me, the similarities are striking. Too obvious for anyone paying attention to have missed. Michonne was a girl hanging out with all boys, just like Judith. Michonne was a bit of a tomboy until she hit puberty, filling out in a sinful way. Just like Judith. God help me, when I realized my baby girl had breasts back in the winter over Christmas break while we were vacationing on Lanai City, in Hawaii, I almost cried. It was like one day they were just there. Taunting me with the reminder that she's not a baby any longer.

Seemingly as suddenly as Michonne blossomed into a young woman, her body filling out into fluid curves, showcased by velvety skin kissed by the sun, my own daughter suddenly had boobs. And as she surfed over those two weeks with me and her brothers, her tawny brown skin got a golden undertone, a little something that the young Cameron commented on the moment he saw her when we returned. What was it he said? Ah yes, he said she was glowing. In that moment I agreed. My baby girl did have a beautiful golden glow to her. All of my kids did. From the older boys, with their wild head fulls of dark glossy curls, to RJ with his little round face a slightly lighter ochre of brown, to even the babies. Little chubby balls of cuteness, the twins, the lightest of all of our kids, who Michonne kept mainly under an umbrella and slathered in sunscreen, even had a little of the sun's kiss in their skin. Hell, even I had tanned.

But there was something now that I think about it, about the way that Cameron looked at Judith that day he rocked up on our porch, ringing the bell to come over and hang like he always does. Bouncing on his toes in that way he has about himself, as though he's trying to tame his energy, focus it in the moment, he was stopped in his tracks when he encountered Michonne, Judith and I in the kitchen taking stock of the grocery situation. He almost looked stricken as he rounded the corner and caught sight of my baby girl, laughing with her mother and I at the bareness of our cabinets. The ebullient nature that Michonne said a lot of child actors carry with them, had somehow stalled out in that moment as the only words he could muster upon seeing Judith, were a jumbling of incoherence that somehow equaled a compliment about her glowing. Glowing.

Gotdam it. I'm going to have to kill that boy.

XXXXXX

"Mom! Ma!"

Glancing up from my phone as I read through the details of the government-imposed quarantine, my attention is pulled away by son hollering up the stairs. "Andre, you do not have to yell. Your mother is coming. She's feeding the babies. She'll be down in a minute." I grouse, aggravation at just about everything tainting my mood. Aggravated at the idea of this whole damn quarantine. The pandemic that's spreading, creating the need for physical and social separation, and if I'm honest, a little anxiety.

While my grandfather transitioned earlier this year after a nasty fight with pneumonia, Michonne and I still have older parents in their 60s, one of whom is still physically vulnerable given her past issues with cancer. Add into that, two eight-month-old babies, and a rambunctious eleven-year-old with asthma, and it's just more than we expected to be dealing with right now. I suppose the good thing is that neither of us have jobs that require we be traveling, or even working outside of the home, but it is going to prove difficult to keep all of these kids, including one that I'm determined to keep away from my baby girl, happy and entertained for who knows how long.

"Ma!"

"Andre, boy did you hear me? I said-"

Raising his thick eyebrows, Andre turns to me as though he's just now hearing what I'm saying. "Huh?"

"I'm here. Andre, you don't have to yell in the house." Michonne softly scolds, her patient tone entering the fray of voices and chatter in the house.

"I just told him, Chonne." I agree, hustling up the stairs to meet her on the landing and take hold of one of the babies from her arms. "Your parents are here, in the living room."

"Oh good. We can get started then." Smiling up at me, she carefully repositions Boden in her arms, and smoothes her hand over the dark, tight coils of Joseph's head that is now nestled against my chest.

"Sorry, Ma." Andre apologizes, towering over his mother as he drops a quick kiss to her cheek once she descends the stairs, then dashes past us into the living room, nabbing my recliner before I can make it in there. Grinning and snickering my way, gloating, Andre's mischievousness is going to get him a quick kick to his rear end if he doesn't move out of my chair.

Bringing up the rear, and lazily meandering past his mother, head down, probably texting someone, Carl brushes a swath of thick dark curls up and out of his face. "Mom, what's the family meeting for?" Not waiting for an answer, and never moving his gaze from the glowing screen, Carl plops down on the large sectional next to his grandparents and unfurls his long legs onto the ottoman. Laying his head on his grandmother Vivian's shoulder, she immediately begins fussing lightly at him about when he's going to get a haircut. Even though he just shakes his head slowly, denying her pleas to see his handsome face from under all that hair, Michonne's mother still allows the overgrown boy the indulgence of her nurturing hugs.

"Well, Carl, we need to go over this news about the quarantine, the pandemic, social distancing." Michonne answers, swiveling her head left, as she bends and hands Boden over to her father, Raymond, who immediately begins bouncing the baby on his lap.

"What's all that, Mama?" RJ questions, with a mouth full of cookies, with he and Ruff both turning towards where Michonne and I stand hip to hip in the entryway to the living room.

From his spot on the rug, laying flat on his stomach reading a book while Ruff the chocolate lab that we got when Lily passed away a couple of years ago, lays dutifully by his side. As usual. Petting the dog, rubbing his head, RJ has an affection for Ruff that is clear to anyone who pays attention. RJ picked Ruff out of the litter of puppies, all scampering over each other when we went to the shelter to find a new member of our already large family. Immediately RJ saw Ruff, stepping over the other dogs as though he was determined for RJ to notice and pick him instead of all the others. And he did. They have been inseparable ever since, with Michonne breaking her no dogs in the bed rule, and allowing Ruff to sleep with RJ. A rule that once broken, meant that Judith could finally let her black cat, Morpheus, sleep in her room. All of which caused Michonne's parents to scoff, noting that black folks usually don't let animals in the bed.

"There is a virus, like the flu but much much worse, that can easily spread. And, it can make people very sick, maybe kill them if they are sick already, or old."

"How old?"

Seeing concern twist his little face, I hurriedly try to soothe him over. "Older than your mama and I, buddy."

"Like Gigi and Grandpa? Gigi always says she's too old for playing games and stuff." he asks, gesturing to my in laws on the couch.

Clearing his throat, my father in law Raymond, who never takes to anyone calling him old, especially when he flexes and points out that he still has all of his hair, responds in that gruff, bass heavy voice of his. "Grandpa isn't old, RJ. But...yeah. Old. Older maybe. But old."

Softening her eyes on the confusion still apparent on RJ's face, Vivian quickly adds, "RJ, your grandpa and I are doctors, so we want you all to listen when we say this is serious. This virus can make you sick, or yes it can make all of your grandparents, who are old get sick. That's why we need to all stay home, as much as possible, so we don't get it, and we don't give it to others. Ok?"

"But, I can still see my girlfriend though right? Cindy said her parents are cancelling their spring break trip, so I can still hang with her while she's home?" Carl asks, his head still lowered to his phone as his thumbs fly, punching out a message that's probably going straight to Cindy.

"No." I shake my head, keeping the answer brief and to the point.

Finally, he lifts his head, coming out of the daze his constant texting keeps him in. "What? Dad, why not? We don't have school. I won't get to see her!"

"Cindy's not family, Carl. While school is canceled, and work is canceled, and the world kind of pauses, everyone needs to stay at home."

Shaking my head, I continue to assert Michonne's point, "That means girlfriends like Cindy, who are not family, gotta stay at home."

Swiveling to turn back towards the center of the room, away from the television, Andre decides to join the discussion. "But Judith's boyfriend Cameron gets to be here? That doesn't seem fair."

"What?" I'm caught off guard. Did Andre just call Cameron Judith's boyfriend?

"Exactly! That's not fair at all, Dad!" Carl joins in.

With Joseph in my arms, his little fingers toying with my face, and me trying to duck and dodge every prod and poke, I can feel my confusion growing. Why isn't anyone answering my damn question? "Wait, why did you call him Judith's boyfriend?"

"Isn't he?" RJ asks, rolling to his side with his head in his upturned palm. Clearly, he's more interested now that this conversation has taken a less serious turn away from talks of viruses and sickness to whatever is going on with his sister. "He's here all the time. All the time."

"What?!" I ask again, waiting on someone in this room to fill me in. I'm missing something right? Turning towards my wife, I can feel my blood boiling, heating my temper. I hate to be the last person to know anything, and it seems that right now that's exactly what's going on.

"Rick, son, it's just like you and Chonne. Right? Hahaha! Welcome to my world!" Raymond laughs, the mirth in his words bellowing from deep in his diaphragm, booming with delight. "It's all fun and games until it's your daughter, ain't that right, Rick?" he asks, walking past me with Boden still bouncing delightedly in his grandfather's arms.

Holding her hands up in a pausing motion, then easing them to my face, Michonne palms my face lovingly. She knows me, and I assume she can tell I'm getting pissed. And I know her, and I can tell in the way that her eyes nervously bounce from the questioning glances we're both getting from the boys, who she gives a short shake of her head to, and then back to me, that she knows more than she told me last night.

"Rick, baby, I need you to be chill right now."

"I'm chill. I'm always chill."

From where he's still perched in my recliner, Andre snickers, "Dad, you're not always chill. You're always getting mad about something."

Skipping my attention away from my wife and to my son, I wave him off. "I am not."

"Remember that guy at Uncle Daryl's birthday party who asked for Mom's autograph?" Andre adds.

"Yes! Dad was ready to knock that guy out!" Carl laughs, throwing a few air punches to punctuate his point.

"Exactly! All he said was he wanted to take Mom for coffee and get her to autograph his comics."

Frowning, I don't recall the incident the same way the boys do. "He wanted more than that. He was all over your mother, looking at her."

Kissing her tongue to her teeth, Michonne's mother chimes in, agreeing with the boys. "Rick you have always had a temper, honey. Especially when it comes to Michonne. You were going to fight your own brother about her. Remember that, Chonne? Poor Jeff."

"Thanks, Mom. Let's just all give Rick a break for a sec ok? And we are getting off track-"

Narrowing my focus on Michonne and the slight reddish flush tinting her pretty face, I don't let myself get distracted by the way she's tugging at the corner of her pouty lips with her teeth, and instead ask in a calm even tone, "Where are Judith and Cameron?"

"Tree house!" RJ yells, the only way it seems the boys in this house can communicate.

"Damn it. I'll go get them out of the tree house. Shit!"

Rubbing her fingers through my hair, not even trying to stop me as I turn to head for the back door, Michonne seemingly give up and sighs at my string of curse words. "Language, Rick."

"I know, sorry, Chonne." I toss back over my shoulder, grimacing at the thought of what I might find in the tree house. It's still early in the day, the noon day sun reaching its apex high in the sky, bathing our large yard with its luminous rays. Dodging soccer balls, skateboards, and a few dog toys littered here and there, the grass crunches under each step of my boots that I'm still wearing from my grocery run.

I've just returned from the farm, checking in with my parents and making sure they have everything they need to make it through the next two weeks of whatever this pandemic situation may bring. And that's what bugs me the most, the unpredictability of a situation like this. Perhaps that's also what has everyone else so unnerved that they inexplicably have begun hoarding toilet paper. As I purposefully walked the aisles of Costco, intent on stocking up on our normal bi-weekly list of groceries and supplies, I was met at the end of the paper products aisle with empty shelves and racks where the toilet paper and paper towels used to be.

I'm not someone who panics. It's not my nature. But I would be lying if I said that the sight of those empty shelves, and the nervous banter of those around me commenting on the lack of paper products, didn't cause a chill to inch across my skin. The sight, the sounds, the news, none of it makes sense, nor does it comfort me. Regardless of the confusion and uncertainty that's attempting to penetrate my cool, I finished gathering everything on my wife's list, as well as the few things that I wanted to be sure my parents had out at the farm.

Though Jeff and Beth are still living there with them, I can't say that those two are the best planners, so trusting that they will have the foresight to take care of things like this pushes me to get this done on my own. It's a quirk of my personality I suppose, and even though I have moved on from my many roles on the farm, I still feel somewhat responsible for it, as well as the furniture business and my parents. Even though Michonne's parents have tried to explain to me from their doctors' perspective, that this pandemic and virus has a lot of unknowns, the fact that my parents live in a fairly isolated farming area should provide them more protection than some older individuals who live in more heavily populated areas. None of this makes me feel any better.

All of this has me in protector mode, as Michonne calls it, needing to take stock of my people. Make sure everyone is accounted for, safe, has what they need. That I have what I need to protect them. Including taking inventory of the few hunting rifles I've got, as well as the Colt Python my granddad left to me.

Michonne is every bit as capable as I am, and honestly, she often makes better decisions under pressure than I do. She's always said that it's because as a person writing stories about the apocalypse, you have to sometimes think logically to keep your characters from being stupid and getting themselves killed. I suppose that's true, and though she may be more patient and measured in her approach to adversity, I know with clarity of mind, that I will do whatever it takes to care for and take care of my family. As long as I know where they are, they have me and my protection.

And it's for that reason, that the idea that Judith and Cameron have spirited themselves away from where I can have eyes on them, to presumably be alone in the infamous tree house, that I am very unhappy. Couple that with the discussions about whatever is going on between Cameron and Judith, as well as our agreement that it is best to allow him to stay with us until his parents are able to return from Europe, and I think any father would be on edge.

That's exactly where I find myself, on edge, as I stand below the steps that lead up to the tree house, my stunned gaze focused through the doorway where Cameron and my baby girl Judith stand. A tentative series of pecks and kisses, blinding them to my furious presence haunting the bottom of the steps.

In that moment I know with certainty, clear as glass, and just as tenuous, I'm going to have to kill this boy.