A Very Badd Christmas (The Badd Brothers #19)

19. Emerson

CHAPTER 19

emerson

I sagged against the goalpost, panting raggedly. A few yards away, just beyond the goal area and penalty arc, Frida sat on a ball, guzzling water. Frida was an employee of Uncle Bax's, a personal trainer and former pro footballer who played for Munich-Bayern as well as Germany's national team. She was lured here a few years ago after she hung up her boots and has steadily built a clientele. She was hard as nails, took no shit, and had a knack for pushing you past your limits without totally breaking you. Hiring her was not for the faint of heart.

I hadn't technically hired her, but she acted like I had, and it was exactly what I needed. I'd come here to work out, get some drills in, do some lifting, maybe run some laps. Anything other than sitting at home, eating junk food, and moping around about Hayden.

Their ship left today. Back to LA, and then they'd be on a plane to Indiana. Hayden had promised he was going to meet me in Seattle after the New Year and we'd figure things out.

But…it felt like the end, like the whole thing had been a holiday break romance. Whirlwind, exciting, intoxicating…and fleeting.

Once he was back home, I'd be out of sight and out of mind. He'd have his mother to take care of. Granted, Kaye seemed to be doing remarkably well, all things considered, but I also had a strong gut feeling that she was the kind of person who would put on a brave, happy face for everyone and would only allow herself to truly feel her deepest emotions when she was alone.

I pushed away from the goalpost, rolled the nearby ball toward me with my toe, flicked it into the air, and booted it at Frida. "Come on. Again."

Without moving from her perch on the ball or putting down her water bottle, Frida headed the ball away. "No. You are not only practicing your skills." She stood up, scraped a hand through her short white-blond hair, and sauntered over to me. "You are avoiding. Who is he? Hmm?"

I shook my head. "Doesn't matter anymore. He's gone, or as good as."

"It matters to you. You are heartbroken. You cannot practice away a broken heart."

"Sure I can. Soccer is how I get through everything."

Frida sighed. "This, I understand. When Maria left me, I was like this, heartbroken and angry. I put myself into football. But it wasn't for football. It wasn't for my team. It was to not have to think or to feel."

"Right, and? Why is that a bad thing?" I asked.

"Because to be truly great, you have to play from the heart. I worked harder than ever, played harder than ever. And I was terrible. I cost my team a title."

"That was a bad call by a biased ref, Frida."

"You forget that I was zero for sixteen in shots on goal that game. Three unforced errors. Two turnovers. Several penalties—I forget how many. It was the worst game of my entire career. You know why?"

"Because of your broken heart?"

"Well, ja , this too, but really because I was not focused. I was angry and hurting and unwilling to do what I must do to be better."

I sighed. "I appreciate what you’re saying, Frida, truly, but I'm not even on a team anymore. I have offers but haven’t decided. I want to graduate first." I shook my head. "My point is, I don't have anyone to let down. There are no tournaments, no games. So yeah, I'm focusing on soccer instead of my feelings because I can. Because there's nothing to do. It was clearly a holiday romance that meant more to me than it did him."

That wasn’t fair and I knew it, but my heart didn’t care about fair.

Hurt seared through me as I thought of how sweetly Hayden had kissed me as he left, promising to call, to come see me, to figure things out between us. And how, despite his sincerity, I just couldn't shake the feeling that when all was said and done, he'd end up staying in Indiana. With his mom. And how could I be mad about that?

I grunted in anger and hurt and confusion, spun on my heel, and kicked a ball as hard as I could. It soared clear to the other side of the pitch and over the back of the net, bouncing off the wall and rolling away.

Frida watched my tantrum with an arched eyebrow. "Tell me."

"What?"

She jogged to a ball over near the corner and passed it to me. "We will work on ball-handling while you tell me everything."

"I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget it."

She shrugged, snagged her bottle, and walked away. "Suit yourself."

"Frida!"

She waved a hand without looking at me. "You cannot escape yourself, Emerson. You could kick a ball to the moon, and still this hurt would be there. You are angry. Do you know why you are angry? Who you are angry at?" She finally stopped and turned to look at me. "No. You do not. And so it will be there inside you like a parasite. I know this. It devoured me until there was nothing left."

"It was just a holiday romance. It didn't mean anything.”

Frida laughed at this. "You are a terrible liar."

I hung my head, tugged the headband down around my neck and fluffed out my curls, then tossed my hair back and replaced the headband. "You're mean."

"Yes. I am a terrible bitch. Everyone knows this. But I am also right."

I’d been training with Frida in the off-season and during breaks since she was hired by Bax, and in some ways, she knows me as well as anyone, even though we've never spoken to or seen each other anywhere but the pitch or the weight room. So yeah, I knew she was right.

"What do you want me to do, Frida? What am I supposed to say? That I love him? That I want him to…what? Abandon his mother when she just lost her husband of fifty years? That I'm angry at him for choosing her instead of me? You know how selfish and irrational that is?"

"You cannot make a shitty, selfish emotion go away just by ignoring it."

"Fine. So there it is. I said it out loud. And oh, look! It's still there. Speaking it out loud didn't magically make it go away. Who knew?"

Frida rolled her eyes at me. "Admitting you have a problem is the first step in solving it."

"What is this, love-sick anonymous?" I wiped the sweat off my face. "Look, Frida, I appreciate what you're trying to do. It just hurts, and I’m mad and confused and there's not a damn thing to do about it. I love him, but I guess not enough to give up my dreams and go live in Indiana with him. And I certainly can't ask him to abandon his grieving mother not even three months after her husband died. What's the solution? There isn't one. It just sucks. It's not his fault, it's not my fault. It's just…life."

Frida nodded. “Well, there it is, hmm? Now, I have to go, Emerson. I have a date with a Greek performance artist named LaLa."

"There's a Greek performance named LaLa living in Ketchikan, Alaska?”

She laughed. "So it would seem. She speaks very little English, and I speak no Greek at all, but she has giant boobs and a beautiful smile and laughs at my phone's translations of German into Greek, and when she laughs, the sun seems to shine a little brighter."

"Well then, go have fun with your Greek performance artist with the big boobs." I squeezed her hand. "Thanks for working with me. I really did need it."

"Any time. Auf Viedersehen , my friend."

"See ya.”

After she was gone, I moped around the indoor pitch alone for a while, chasing balls around and half-heartedly practicing footwork drills, but the truth was my heart wasn't in it anymore.

All I could think about was Hayden.

At home, I filled up on leftovers and watched Dunc and Dane yell at each other while playing Injustice. Delia was working, Dru was out with some of the other aunts, and Bast was on the phone with the manager of the Anchorage location—and didn’t sound happy with the conversation. Except for the boys’ playful hollering, the house was quiet and empty.

Between matches, the boys gathered a bunch of snacks and slices of pie and plopped back down.

Dunc swallowed a massive bite of pumpkin pie and then sniffed the air. "Dude, who smells like burnt onions and dead feet?"

"Fuck you," I muttered.

Dunc leaned toward me and then reared away, gagging. "Em, dearest sister of mine whom I fear and love in equal proportion…I say this with all possible love and respect, but please, go shower."

Dane popped a buckeye into his mouth, speaking around it as he chewed. "You smell awful." It came out OOH H-MEH AH-HUH .

I pulled my shirt away, tucked my nose under the neckline, and sniffed. I pulled away with a gag. "Oh, fuck. You're not kidding."

Duncan shoved a buckeye into my mouth, effectively preventing me from speaking. "Shower, woman. Shower. Smelling like a zombie won't fix anything." He shoved me off the couch, requiring me to either stand up or fall down.

I elected to stand up, chewing the treat. "Asshole." AAA-HOE .

"You love me and you know it." He picked up a slice of pie with his hands and shoveled half of it into his mouth, chewing until he could enunciate halfway clearly. "Come on, Dane. You gotta pick someone besides Batman this time."

"Why? So you actually stand a chance of winning?"

"It's cheap! You use the same move over and over again. Time it right and there's no defending against it."

"Exactly. It's not cheap, it's winning."

"It's cheap."

"Fine. I won’t use the move, and I'll still kick your ass with my Batman."

"He's not your Batman."

"You're just salty because you suck with everyone."

I left the boys to their squabbling and headed for my room. I closed my bedroom door but didn't bother locking it—the boys know better than to come in if my door is closed. I stripped out of my sweaty, smelly clothes and twisted on the shower. While the water heated, I brushed my teeth because I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had over break—gross, I know, but what else are holidays for? Holiday carbs and calories don’t count, and neither does hygiene. The boys hadn't changed out of their PJs since Christmas Eve, and that was two days ago.

I raked a brush through my hair, yanking out the worst of the snarls.

I took the world's longest shower, washed my hair twice and conditioned it once, lathered up, rinsed off…all while trying like hell not to think about Hayden in this shower with me.

Eventually, I had to get out. I wrapped my hair in a towel and lotioned my freshly shaved legs and everything else. I knew I should use the diffuser on my curls, but I just didn’t want to. I'd air dry in bed for a while and doomscroll on my phone instead. Maybe that would give me the motivation to take care of my insanely demanding hair.

I exited the bathroom, tugging my hair free of the turbaned towel and using it to squeeze handfuls of hair. As such, the towel obscured my vision, but I knew the steps from the bathroom to my bed blindfolded.

Seating myself on the edge of my bed, I flipped my hair forward and hung my head upside down, sliding my fingers through the ringlets.

Something to my left caught my eye: a black sock. A black sock that seemed to have a foot inside it. Crossed over it was a second sock. Attached to the socks was a pair of black jeans. Still upside down, I followed the jeans—inside of which appeared to be legs—up to a black-and-gold Purdue hoodie.

My heart pounded like a tribal drum. My mouth went dry. My stomach flipped.

I froze with my hands in my hair, upside down.

Hayden.

Inside the socks, jeans, and hoodie…was Hayden.

Still upside down, I glanced at my clock: 12:47 pm. "Um. Hi?"

He smiled at me, and the smile possessed secrets and was rife with amusement, and love, and desire. "Well hello there." Ah yes, his best Obi-Wan Kenobi impression. It shouldn't make me feel juicy down under, but it did.

"I…your ship…it…it left?"

"It did."

"Why…" I sat up, flipping my hair backward. "Why aren't you on it?"

"Because I’m here."

I tightened the towel around my torso and re-tucked it in place. "So I see. In my room. While I was in the shower."

"I thought about getting in with you."

"Why didn’t you?"

"I figured we need to talk first."

"I suppose it would be hard to talk about things if I have your cock in my mouth."

"Our your pussy in mine."

"Right. Such things do make conversations tricky." I stared at him for a long time. "Hayden…what are you doing here?"

"I love you." He shrugged as if that was all the answer I needed.

"You could talk while I suck, and then I talk while you lick?"

He laughed. "Or—hot take, here, I know—but we could talk and then get to the licking and sucking."

"Then we need to stop talking about licking and sucking," I said.

"Agreed."

I stood up. "Let me get dressed first."

"Want me to leave?"

I frowned at him. "Why? You think I'm suddenly gonna be shy about you seeing me naked?" He just shrugged, and I tugged the towel off and tossed it into the hamper. "Just stay there where you are and keep your hands to yourself for the next thirty seconds."

He made a big show of sitting on his hands, but there was no escaping the way he very thoroughly eye-fucked every inch of me as I shimmied into a purple thong, stuffed myself into a loose, comfortable black camisole, and then tugged on my favorite pair of heather-gray yoga pants. They were my favorite because they had a pocket in the thigh big enough to hold my phone, and they made my ass look goddamned fantastic.

When I was dressed, I sat on the bed facing Hayden, who was sitting in the chair in the corner—the in-between chair, I call it, where I keep the clothes I've worn that I'm not ready to wash yet but don't want to put back in the drawer.

He slid his hands out from under his thighs and shook them out, sighing. "God, that was difficult."

"What? Keeping your hands to yourself?"

"Yes." He gestured at me with a flick of a finger. "Not that that outfit is helping."

I frowned and laughed, shaking my head. "It's a shitty old cammy and yoga pants. Barely a step up from period week sweats."

"We can agree to disagree on that one, babe."

I ran my fingers through my hair again. "Okay, so…again, what are you doing here? Why aren't you on the boat?"

He pointed at the floor: his suitcase and duffel bag were there, the duffel on top of the suitcase, held in place by the handle. "I'm staying here with you.”

I shook my head. "But…your mom."

He let out a long sigh. "Apparently, she's decided to take immediate retirement, sell my childhood home, and….I'm not sure what. She’s going to Mallorca with Olivia. And then what? I don't know. She doesn’t know, beyond rebuilding herself and her life as a widow."

"I…wow. And you weren't expecting this?”

"Not at all." he sat forward, wiping his face with both hands. "I've been sick over everything, Em. I was going out of my mind this morning. I got into a fight with my suitcase…and lost."

I snickered. "I've been there. Suitcases can be tricksy little fuckers."

"They can." He scraped his hand through his hair, mussing it up further, making it so sexy my mouth watered and my pussy clenched. "I just didn't know what to do, you know? Like, I fucking love you. I desperately want to be with you. But…how could I leave my mom alone in a time like this?" He shook his head, extending his hands out to the side and then slapping them on his thighs. "I couldn’t. I just…couldn't. And neither could I ask you to give up your whole life, your dreams, everything, to…do what? Move to Indiana? Coach peewee soccer when you could be playing at FIFA in a few years?"

"I've been sick about it, too," I admitted. "You're too far away."

He held out his arms, and I took the invitation eagerly, leaving the bed and curling up on his lap. I tucked my feet between his thighs and the side of the chair, leaned into his chest and let him support my back with his arm, settling my head under his chin.

I exhaled, finally feeling at peace in the world once again. "Hayden, I wish I was more selfless. I wish I was the type of woman who could set my dreams aside and just go to Indiana with you and be a stay-at-home mom. I'm just not that person, and I'm sorry."

He didn't answer for a while. "Take that back."

I pulled away and looked into his eyes, a confused frown overtaking my face. "What?"

"Take that back. What you just said—take it back."

I laughed in disbelief. "I…I mean, you can't take back words, Hayden. And it's true—I wish I was less selfish, less focused on my goals."

He turned me toward him so I was straddling him, facing him. "Emerson Grace, I fucking love you. I love who you are. I love that you’re a fierce competitor. I've watched a lot of highlights from your games. I've brushed up on your stats. I'm learning about soccer so I can better understand exactly how fucking talented and hardworking you are. I don't want you to be more selfless. I don't want you to give up your dreams. If you gave up your goals of making the US Women's National Team and playing professionally, you would be depriving the world of sports of someone who I truly believe will go on to be one of the all-time greats. You have that amount of talent and drive and charisma. You have that work ethic. It's who you are, and I'll be damned and double goddamned if I'll get in the way of that. It's who you are—it's your destiny."

My throat closed up and tears spurted out of my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. My heart swelled in my chest until my stomach flipped in protest. "Hayden," I said, choking on my emotions. "You're being silly."

"The fuck I am," he said, his voice fierce and intense. "I believe in you more than I've ever believed in anything. It would be a tragedy of epic proportions if you gave it all up to be a housewife in suburban Indiana. There's nothing wrong with that life—it's a beautiful thing if it's what both parties want. But it's not what you want. It's not what you're built for."

"I do want kids someday," I whispered. "I do want a family. I want to be a mommy. I want to be the mother mine wasn’t—the mother Dru is . Just not yet."

"God, Em, I hope you didn't think I was in any way implying you're not going to be an amazing mother. I just meant—"

I put my fingers over his lips. "I know what you meant. I was clarifying."

He cupped my face in his hands, caressed my cheekbones with his thumbs. "Why would you give everything up to do nothing in Indiana when I can work from anywhere in the world? I can work anywhere I have a decent internet connection. And honestly, as much as I like where I work, I'm not passionate about it. I enjoy the work, but I don't love it." He closed his eyes, drew in a massive breath, held it, and let it out slowly. "What I'm realizing—what Mom forced me to understand literally just now—was that when Dad died, it blew up our lives. His death totally destroyed the status quo of who Mom is and who I am."

My eyes teared up again, this time in grief for him. "Hayden, I don't know if I've ever said this, but I'm so sorry for your loss. I hate those words because they just seem so inadequate, but they're all I have."

He smiled. "Thanks. It really is all there is to say. But my point in saying that is not for sympathy or to sound all poor me. Yes, I’m gutted by Dad's death. So is Mom. But what she told me is that Dad wouldn't want us to stop living. He wouldn't want us to try to force ourselves back into the old patterns of life that we occupied when he was alive. That life is gone. Mom can't live in that house anymore. And I get it—I feel the same way. It's…I dunno. Haunted is the closest thing I can come up with, not that Dad is a ghost with unfinished business, but it's just too much. Too many memories. In the weeks after his death before we left on this cruise, I saw him everywhere. I kept walking into that house expecting to see him in his office grading papers and tests and lab reports. Coming in from grilling on the back deck. Stumbling around in his tighty whiteys in the morning, looking for coffee, like he did when I lived there. She's selling the house because she has to move on, and she can't do that living there. But it's not just the house. It's the whole life we had."

"So…what does that mean for you?" I asked. "For me. For us."

"Mom told me in no uncertain terms that you and I are meant to be together. But her uprooting everything, it's not about you or me or us—it's truly for herself. But she…" he trailed off, started again. 'This is hard to say."

I leaned into him and kissed his cheekbone beneath his eye, his forehead, hands framing his face, gazing into his holly-green eyes. "Just say it, honey. Whatever it is."

"She knew I wouldn't…I wouldn't be able to leave her. Not on my own. No matter how much I love you, I just…I couldn't have…" he swallowed hard, eyes screwing shut. "I just couldn't , Em."

"No, of course you couldn't." I brushed the pads of my thumbs over his eyelids. "Look at me, baby, please." His eyes opened. "I wouldn't have asked you to. I would never have expected you to. I wouldn't have let you. Not now, not in a time like this. She's your mom . You love her. How could I possibly take you away from her when she needs you and be able to look myself in the mirror?"

"She took that choice out of both our hands. But like I said, it really boils down to her doing it because it’s what she needs—I see that. I'm grateful for it. That doesn't mean I'm not a little scared—I've never lived anywhere but Indiana. Moving out was hard enough, and I only moved ten minutes away. But it’s what I want. Honestly, it's what I need: to be with you. To figure out, together, what our life is going to look like."

"I like the sound of that."

"I know it's zero to a hundred in nothing flat, but all I want is to do life with you. What that looks like, where we go, how we get there…we can figure all that out one step at a time."

"Doing life with you sounds pretty fucking perfect to me," I said.

He dug his fingers into my hair, nails sliding over my scalp, making me shudder with delicious anticipation as he claimed my mouth in a slow, scorching kiss.

His hands raked through my hair, jumped down to cradle my ass. Slid upward, under my camisole, palms searing over my bare back, taking the thin layer of lace and silk with it. I lifted my arms overhead and he peeled it off of me; my heavy, aching breasts lifted with the garment and then bounced free. His hands immediately went to them, and I lost my breath as he thumbed my rigid nipples, making me throw my head back with a gasp. His lips grazed my throat as his hands cupped and kneaded my breasts, and I leaned back and guided his mouth to my nipple. I whimpered between gritted teeth as searing arousal shivered through me.

"Hayden," I whispered. "Take me to bed. Please. I need you to make love to me."

He rose to his feet and my legs locked around his waist. He kissed my throat and then my jaw beside my ear and then claimed my mouth, driving his tongue into my mouth. I groaned as his tongue dominated mine and then shrieked a shocked laugh as he threw me onto the bed. I hadn't even bounced once before he pounced, grabbing my yoga pants at the waistband and hauling them down, taking my thong with them and stripping them inside out, tossing them aside. He hovered over me, kissed one breast, the other. Kissed my diaphragm, my belly. My navel. My hipbone. The tender silken no man's land between hipbone and labia. And then his mouth was on my pussy, and there was no lead-up, no build-up, no teasing. Just his tongue assaulting my clit with ravenous hunger, eager and quick. I rose to the cusp of climax within seconds, and then he slid a finger inside me, and then a second, and then a third, and then he was plundering my sex with slicking, plunging fingers and suckling my clit and pinching my nipple all at once, and I came with a scream, snagging my pillow and muffling myself as I bucked and thrashed.

After that first, he switched it up. Removed all but one of his fingers and let me gasp and whimper back down the other side of the orgasm, mouthing my clit slowly. He lavished slow, tender love on me, then, kissing me and fingering me with delicacy and affection, gradually ramping me back up to a whimpering, sobbing, weeping climax.

Upon a third, I was wrung out and shattered, hyper-aroused and wild with need for him. I sat up, pushing him away. Wiped his mouth with my hands and then kissed him, ripping his sweatshirt off and hurling it aside, the white T-shirt underneath still tangled up in the hoodie. I shoved him to his back and yanked at his fly, his zipper. Ripped his jeans off inside out and then drew his underwear off, revealing his beautiful cock. It was hard and thick and weeping pre-cum, begging for me. All I wanted was to take him barely inside me, but I knew better. I'd gotten birth control and had taken the first pill, but we had to wait at least a week before we went bare again.

I grabbed a condom from the drawer, ripped it open, and rolled it onto him, biting my lip with arousal at the way his eyes rolled back in his head as I slid the latex onto him with a hand-over-hand caress.

Swinging a leg over his hips, I straddled him, grasped his cock and sank on him, taking him all at once in a single slow slide. He threw his head back and groaned loudly—I giggled and clapped a hand over his mouth. I tangled my fingers with his, palms to palms, and braced against his hands for balance as I sat tall astride him. Lifted, slicking him almost all the way out of me, and rolled my hips in a wide circle—and slammed down, ass meeting his thighs with a resounding clap. I whimpered past clenched teeth as he drove deep, pushing against our joined hands and slid back up. Slammed down again. And again. Faster and faster. My tits jounced with a rough ache at each clap of our meeting bodies, and his eyes devoured each bounce and shift and sway.

He groaned raggedly with his head pressed back into the pillow as I slapped down onto him yet again, feeling my orgasm pulse hot and chaotic and intense in my belly. Once more—I leaned forward and let him support my weight with our joined hands, drew my sex up along his throbbing cock, feathered a few short hip-rolling thrusts, and then sank one more time…

I came apart with a breathless cry, and Hayden caught me as I fell forward onto him, pushing back and down hard and fast and wild into his thrusts, crying openly, weeping raggedly through my climax. I pressed my open, quivering mouth to his chest, gasping shrill and staccato as wave after wave of ecstasy smashed me into shuddering, collapsing shards of myself.

And then he came.

I felt him pulse thick inside me, felt the heat of his release fill the condom inside me, and he clutched my ass and held me in place as he fucked into me through his orgasm.

"Oh fuck I love you," he gasped. "Em, I love you. I love you. I love you so fucking much."

Still shattering around him as he came inside me, all I could do was find his mouth and kiss him as we came together. "I love you, Hayden. Oh god, my love, don't stop. Don’t ever stop."

He didn't.

He loved me through our united climaxes until we were both helpless and boneless, and he cradled me in his arms as I lay prone on his body, not wanting to move, to lose him inside me, to lose his arms and his heat and his strength, not even to reposition.

I fell asleep like that and only woke up a couple hours later to find that he'd cleaned up and returned to spoon me. I felt him wedged semi-solid between my ass cheeks, his hand loosely cupping my breast, breath on my shoulder.

He woke up slowly, breathing a sleepy, grumbling groan. Squeezed my boob, and then, seeming to wake up enough to be cognizant of our positions, he loosed his hold to a gentle caress.

He hardened against me. I moaned with aroused anticipation as I felt his cock grow longer and harder, slowly spreading me apart. When he was fully erect, I reached between my thighs and fitted his tip to my opening, and he slid in easily. I was soaked, slippery and slick, and he plunged deep, hips tapping against my ass. He kissed my shoulder blade as he thrust, and then my nape.

I rolled to my left, and he went with me; I put my knees beneath me and stretched my torso out long, flattening my chest against the bed, tipping my ass high.

"Ah fuck, Em," he growled, taking rough possession of my wide-spread ass with his hands. "So fucking perfect."

I drove back into him as he fucked me, then. It didn't take long for him to lose control, grunting, slamming deep.

"Come on my ass," I moaned, fingering myself, face pressed into the pillow. "Come on me, Hayden. Come all over me."

He fucked me from behind once, twice, a third time, hard and rough and beautiful. And then I felt him yank free of me and felt his hand grindingly wildly on his cock. He came with a teeth-clenched growl, and I felt him unleash on me, hot come painting my ass cheeks and the small of my back and my spine, again and again and again, until he finally sank to sit on his feet, panting. I collapsed forward, shaking with the aftershocks of my orgasm.

I let myself stay boneless as he slid off the bed and came back with a wet, hot washcloth and wiped me clean, and then himself.

After discarding the washcloth, he lay on his back and pulled me into the nook, which was very quickly becoming my favorite place in the whole world.

"We can't keep doing that," he whispered. "You feel too fucking good. I won’t be able to pull out one of these times."

I groaned a laugh. "I know, I know. I just couldn’t help myself. You feel too fucking good, bare inside me." I cupped his cock and balls in my hand, just to hold him, to feel him. "The good news is, I started birth control. We should be good to go in a week or so. We'll just have to be more careful until then."

We lounged in silence, basking in the afterglow…until he started to twitch and respond under my hand.

"Better let go unless you're ready for round three," he mumbled.

“You have somewhere else to be?" I asked.

"No."

I clutched him, caressed him. "Then hush up and let me have my wicked way with you."

"Do you think sex will continue to get better every time like it has?" he asked. "Because every time I think it can’t get any more fucking incredible with you, it does."

I pushed the blanket and sheet away and slid my face along his chest and then over the rippling field of his rock-hard abs on my way to the promised land. "I don't know, but I pray it does, and I plan to spend the rest of our lives finding out."