Page 37 of Her Royal Daddy
Later tonight, she would be over my knee and in my bed, kicking and crying while I spanked and punished her sexy little ass.
Tomorrow morning, I had every expectation that most if not all the people in this room would go right back to whispering, mocking me, and calling me the Stripper King.
But that was tonight, and that was tomorrow, and right now, in this moment, Norah Baxter was in my arms, in my life, and I was the luckiest man alive.
Epilogue
Mazi
Norah bore down with the last bit of strength that she had. Teeth bared, sweat shining on her face, she growl-howled as she pushed and pushed and finally, to the cheering delight of the midwife and her two female attendants, our first child was born.
“Congratulations, Mama,” the midwife cried. “You have a boy!”
For those who were counting (and there were a few), he came just over three weeks early, but one would never have known from his size or his lungs that he was ‘premature.’ He wasn’t. There was also no doubt that he was mine. From his hair to his skin, to the dimple in his chin, he was, every squalling inch of him, his father’s temperamental son.
“Congratulations, Papa,” the midwife said, after cleaning and wrapping, and laying him in my arms.
I took him to my little girl first. Although exhausted, Norah roused enough to hold him, and for the longest time the two stared into one another’s eyes.
“Hi,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Something I’m sure she meant with all her heart, although I was equally as sure she’d be singing a different tune a week or so from now when she’d finally recovered enough for us to start working through the extensive Naughty List she’d accrued over the last few months. Now that the baby was born and we no longer had to worry about doing something that might hurt him, I was more than ready to resume my normal daddy activities.
I was also more than ready to assume my brand-new daddy activities.
Six hours of labor had taken their toll. Too tired to hold him anymore, Norah let me take our son back again. “Go,” she said, smiling even as she closed her eyes. “Introduce him to your father. I know you want to.”
I did want to. I had promises to keep, both to my son—who’d heard me whispering them every night before his mother and I went to sleep—and to my father, who had finally passed two days after Norah’s and my wedding.
Bending to lay a kiss upon my good girl’s head, I stroked her hair. “I’ll be back soon,” I promised, before my newborn son and I took our very first walk together. It was a short walk, relatively. We only went down the hall, from the royal family apartment to the head of the main stairs, where a life-sized portrait of my father in the prime of his life now hung.
“Hi, Dad,” I greeted, tipping the baby up so the two could better see one another. “Ona-Mazi,” I formally introduced. “Meet your grandson, Ona-Azid.” My father wasn’t in the picture and I knew that, but we’d had such a short time together. It comforted me still to be able to see his face, especially as I admitted, “You were right. He’s a boy.”
But then, my father had been right about a lot of things. Even in his mistakes, he’d been right and to my last breath I would forever be grateful that he’d reversed his last one in time to keep me from making the same.
I had done a lot of things in the months since he’d been gone. Tourism was up and so was the local economy. Slowly, day by day, decision after decision, I was proving myself to be an effective King of Osei. Some still whispered, calling me the King of Strippers. Some called me my father’s son. Now and then, Jax was one of them, although I still had a long way to go before I earned the same level of loyalty from that grumpy old man that my father had enjoyed.
