by Max Monroe
I couldn’t help it, though, and I didn’t mind that I still wore my clothes. Her skin was like a flavor, one I swore had been specifically designed for me by Baskin Robbins, and her nipples were like the cherries on top. Deep red from my attention and perfectly delicious.
But the bleating of her phone threatened to pop my flawless pleasure bubble.
And I was in no way ready to stop.
“Wes,” she whispered as it continued to ring, and I shook my head, my lips skimming the skin of her throat as I did.
“No, sweetheart. Leave it,” I reiterated.
I was frantic—desperate to get inside, to go further, deeper, harder—and her skin felt electric in my hands.
“God, Win,” I breathed into the space between her breasts as her thighs clenched me even tighter at the hips and she started to shake. I wasn’t even inside her yet, but the friction of my body on hers and the danger of being found were enough to make anyone go crazy.
Her nails dug into the skin of my neck as she squeezed, needy and greedy and trying to figure out how to get my mouth to be everywhere at once.
That was a lot to glean from the hold of her hands on my neck, but trust me, it was all there and then some. The shift of her hips, the catch in her breath, the way her chest vibrated with the effort it was taking to control her breathing.
My ears roared the way they always did when I was trying to be quiet, so the harsh reminder of her cell phone as it rang a second time pierced painfully into my brain.
Goddammit.
I ached in other places too, but the pain was entirely different. Nagging, unsatisfied, and, if I had to assign a color to it, I’d have no other choice than a hue of very deep blue.
“Wes,” she whispered urgently. I dropped her feet to the floor obediently and pulled my body back, unmolding it from hers, but not before sinking my fingers more tightly into the flesh of her bare ass one more time.
“I know,” I told her. She had to answer it. She has a kid. “Go ahead.”
She practically dove for her purse, unzipping it and wildly brushing the contents out of the way until she came to the offending device.
“Hello?” she answered, reaching down to grab the tiny shorts of her Harley Quinn costume at the same time. She didn’t bother with the fishnets that lay discarded haphazardly on the floor, but the time to be naked had apparently passed.
I felt like crying.
“What?” she asked, the tone of her voice changing as she hopped on one foot, the phone between her shoulder and her cheek, and struggled to get the shorts on and pull the material of her shirt back down over her breasts at the same time.
I grabbed her hip to still her frantic movements and slid my hand down the outside of her thigh as I sank slowly to my knees and grabbed the fabric from her hands. She looked down at me, but the dark hall made it hard to see what was on her face.
All I knew was that I wanted her to feel better—to alleviate her frenzy.
Slowly, gently, I eased her shorts back into place, skimming the skin and breathing all that she was in before kissing the inside of her hip and settling the waistband there.
“How many?” she questioned sharply into the dark.
As much as I knew I should move, I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense, but something about staying there in front of her, my hands at her hips and my thumbs soothing the exposed skin as she spoke, settled something inside of me.
Normally rushing from one activity to the next, I didn’t spend much time like this—with nothing on my mind other than the sensation of her skin under mine and my ability to slow her breathing and quell the shake in her voice with something as simple as helping her get dressed and a gentle caress.
I’d never in my life felt like I was missing anything. Not the absence of a mother figure or the lack of a real romantic relationship or the unconditional love of a child or a pet.
But this, right now, the peace and satisfaction I felt from a simple exchange with a woman I hardly knew, felt overwhelmingly, unmistakably, like something I’d very much been missing.
“Okay, okay. I’m not panicking,” she told the caller as I pushed to my feet. “Do I sound like I’m panicking?”
She was asking him, but when her eyes met mine, the distant light glowing off the brilliant blue of them now that I towered above her, I knew she was asking me too.
I shook my head softly.
“Exactly,” she said, and this time, with the backing of my confirmation, it was more confident.
“How is she?”
Lamely and dumbly, I cringed at the fact that I honestly hadn’t put anything together until that moment. Her daughter.
I grabbed her elbow to call her eyes back to mine and raised my brows in question. Her face melted into a small smile before she mouthed, “She’s okay. Stitches.”
The knot in my stomach unfurled slightly at her silent words, but another, different one formed just as quickly. One that had more to do with the insecurities of a commitment-phobic man than worry over the health and safety of a child.
“Thanks, Rem. Just tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. And get her a donut; she loves donuts. Not cake. A donut.” She let her head fall back and sank into the wall, covering her eyes with the hand free of the burden of her phone. “I know you know.”
Reaching out, I gathered her into my embrace, hugging tightly until I felt her relax in my hold. It took a few seconds for the tension to melt from each muscle, but when she finally did, everything felt right.
Her voice muffled in my chest, she spoke again. “I’ll be there soon.” She nodded there, the movement scraping the fabric of my shirt across the nerves, and I squeezed her tighter on reflex.
“Thanks, Remy.” She paused. “I love you, too.”
She pushed against my chest lightly, and reluctantly, I let her go and looked down into her upset-but-handling-it eyes.
“Where are we headed?” I asked. The skin of her jaw felt like butter under my thumbs.
“What?” she asked softly, and then, realizing my intention, shook her head. “You don’t have to leave, Wes. She’s fine. On her way home from St. Luke’s now. She saw a doctor I know and trust, and my brother is with her.”
“But you’re leaving, right?”
She paused, confusion influencing the features of her face to pull tighter. “Well, yeah.”
“Then I am too.”
“Wes…” she started, but I didn’t let her finish.
“I’ll take you. I have my car, and it’ll get you there a lot faster than the subway.”
That sealed it—without even a moment of question.
“Okay.”
Apparently, I wasn’t above using a mother’s love for her child to get my way.
The real surprise, though, was the way I was fighting so hard to get it.
By my own doing, I, Wes Lancaster, self-proclaimed kid-phobic and anti-family man, was about to meet her daughter.
Fuck.
Winnie had only been surprised briefly that “my car” was, in fact, a car service. I did, after all, drive myself to the stadium daily, and our timing had been such on a couple of days that she’d witnessed this for herself.
But driving around the city was a nightmare I didn’t particularly like having—especially not in a recurring capacity.
Because of that, I only used my personal vehicles when I was driving outside of the city or somewhere I knew would have easily accommodated parking.
Winnie lived in a nice brownstone uptown, and thankfully, the traffic had been sparse as we’d catapulted our way there from The Metro in Midtown.
But she hadn’t paused to take in the scenery upon our arrival, so I hadn’t either, following her into the house and signaling my driver to wait for my call with a gesture over my shoulder. There wasn’t time for anything else.
Winnie didn’t even notice I’d followed her, so intent on laying eyes on her daughter that nothing else mattered in a consequential capacity. I didn’t blame her for
it, and more than that, I made absolutely no attempt to call attention to myself. I had the distinct feeling the only reason I was actually gaining entry into her home was because she didn’t realize I’d done it.
Down a long, molding-lined hallway, we made our way to the kitchen, the bright lights of it shining like a beacon the entire way. Winnie didn’t pause or falter in her quest to touch her daughter and reassure herself of her safety, moving across the room swiftly and with purpose, but she did it in a way that wouldn’t rekindle the flame of her daughter’s own anxiety. A soft kiss to her cheek, a sweep of her blond hair from her tiny shoulder, and a look into her daughter’s eyes were all Winnie needed to know she was all right. One brief perusal of the six or so stitches on Lex’s chin, and Winnie’s shoulders visibly relaxed like a deflating balloon.
So entranced by the interaction, I didn’t even notice there was anyone else in the room.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I couldn’t say the same for the man stalking in my direction with steel in his gray eyes and menace in his posture—a man who, I presumed, was Winnie’s brother Remy—because, boy, he had noticed me.
His features mirrored Winnie’s, and his authoritarian presence reminded me of the drive I saw in her every day. But he was dark to her light, his nearly jet black hair and olive skin at complete odds with the blond and fair nature of everything Winnie.
And murder raged behind his eyes.
At once, a thought I’d never before popped unwittingly into my mind: thank fuck for Thatch. Years of standing unblinkingly in the face of the big, bulky giant’s threats had prepared me for this moment.
The answer to Remy’s question didn’t come from me, though. And it didn’t come from Winnie either.
“You’re Wes Lancaster,” Winnie’s daughter stated boldly into the tense room. Remy’s surprised eyes left me immediately, but I didn’t take notice for long. My gaze followed his to the source, and at roughly three-and-a-half-feet tall, Winnie’s daughter, Lexi, made a far more imposing sight than I would ever have expected.
With a rough swallow to suppress my nerves, I jerked my head up until my eyes found Winnie’s. She smiled a little, unsure but confident all at once. “Lexi is pretty into the Mavericks,” she explained, tilting her head down to look at her daughter. “Right, Lex?”
Lexi looked up to me and back to her mother quickly. I expected her to meet my eyes again, but they never quite made it back, instead focusing vaguely on the column of my throat.
God. I wonder if she noticed the nervous swallow.
“Self-made restaurateur, one of Forbes’ wealthiest men under thirty-five with a net worth of four-point-six billion dollars, owner of the New York Mavericks for six years with a five-year stretch including five NFC East titles, two NFC Championships, and three trips to the Super Bowl with one Super Bowl victory,” she rattled off easily, counting off each number she said with a flick of the appropriate number of nimble little fingers.
Apparently, when your eyes almost bug out of your head, it makes you stutter. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah. That’s…that’s me.”
Remy’s assessing gaze found mine again immediately. I avoided his eyes in all the ways I could think to—by looking at literally every other person in the room.
I glanced up at Winnie, but her face was hidden as she put some cookies out on a plate on the counter, so I forced my awkward attention back to her daughter. Her attention was so intimidating, I found myself considering looking back to the angry, two-hundred-or-so-pound man.
“Do you have a favorite player?” I asked, trying to be normal and thanking my lucky fucking stars I had knowledge of the subject matter.
“Quinn Bailey went for over five thousand yards in the regular season last year, fifty-five touchdowns, and only threw ten interceptions.”
I looked to Win again as my eyebrows shot to my hairline. Her daughter was fucking incredible.
“Where does she go to school, Win? College?”
A blush flushed the apples of her cheeks before trailing slowly down the line of her neck. It was unbelievably fucking inappropriate, with her brother and her daughter in the room, but I couldn’t steer my mind away from one thought.
I hope to God she’s turned on.
You’re such an idiot, my brain rebuked. And I knew it was right. I cleared my throat in an attempt to banish any such inappropriate thought.
Tipping my gaze back down to her daughter, I found Lex looking at me intently, her intelligent eyes like laser beams straight to my insides. I hoped like fuck she couldn’t read minds.
“So…” I ventured. “Quinn Bailey is your favorite?”
She blinked, her chin tucked to her chest as she peeked up at me from below. She looked slightly evil and like she might eat my soul. Which, ironically, was exactly how I’d been picturing children for years. My illusions of them weren’t nearly this smart, though. Fuck, I wasn’t this smart.
“No.”
Done with me, she turned and walked right out of the room without looking back. I half expected her to give me the old middle finger salute over her shoulder as she left.
I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but I thought, maybe, just maybe, Winnie’s six-year-old daughter had just schooled me. Hard.
It took me a minute to turn around as I stood there staring after her retreating form.
Winnie spoke hesitantly from behind me. “I’m sorry. She’s…well, Lex is different.”
Her voice sounded funny, and not the kind that made me laugh. I turned to face her in the hopes that visual cues would provide some kind of clue as to the reason.
A line pinched the skin between her brows, and the corners of her lips turned up. It was a self-conscious mix of embarrassment and pride. And for the life of me, I couldn’t understand the first.
“Don’t apologize to this guy,” Remy told her caustically.
Unflaggingly, I agreed with his message, but unlike Remy, I had no plans to address it directly, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t have used that tone.
Working hard to turn my glare down to a simmer, I looked from Remy to Winnie and softened everything about myself when I saw the insecurity on her face.
Winnie was a brilliant woman—one who didn’t need me or her brother or any-fucking-body telling her anything about the way she raised her daughter or didn’t. She could draw her own conclusions from the awe in my voice.
“She’s awesome. I can’t believe she knows all that shit,” I told her, confessing, “I don’t even know all that shit.”
Remy nodded, seemingly satisfied with my response, and turned back to his sister, his hands going accusingly to his hips when he noticed something other than his night of crisis and the “stupid fuck” her sister had brought home for the first time. At least, that’s what I figured he thought of me.
“What in the fuck are you wearing?”
She rolled her eyes and waved him off. “It’s a long story.”
When he raised his eyebrows like he was waiting for her to tell it, she went on, “One I’m too tired to tell.”
I watched like a ping-pong ball, oscillating back and forth from one to the other as they exchanged an entire additional conversation with just their eyes.
“Thanks for everything.” Her eyes flicked from him to me and back again. “You can go now.”
“Him or me?” her brother asked, outraged, and fuck if he was the only one wondering. Still, I said nothing. I figured silence was my best bet.
She seemed to make a decision then, and I didn’t even have to guess if I was going to like the answer—I wasn’t.
“Both of you, actually. It’s been a long night. I just want to get Lex to bed and me to bed, and I’d really like to do it not in this costume.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I’d be happy to assist in ridding her of any and all apparel when her brother’s knowing eyes jerked to me.
I kept my face carefully blank.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she told us, usher
ing us toward the door. “And before you ask, I mean both of you.”
As we stood shoulder to shoulder on her porch, Winnie shut the door with a smile and a wave. Neither her brother nor I moved an inch for several, long seconds.
Remy’s body seemed to hum with what was coming, the very energy of his words reaching out in warning before he uttered even the first syllable.
“I own a shotgun, a shovel, and have three very eager helpers for the disposal of your body.”
My eyes closed in a mix of everything at once—humor, surprise that the first threat of this kind was coming to me at such a late age, and uncertainty about whether or not I could be the man who didn’t deserve a body bag.
“Noted,” I replied finally, but he was already on his way down the steps and he didn’t look back.
Way to go, Wes, I told myself as I descended the stairs slowly. Years of sleeping with anything that moves, and you’ve chosen to become obsessed with a woman with a child and four brothers.
Goddammit.
“Here, Lex,” I said as I handed her a calculator from my desk to fool around with. “Work some numbers while I finish up a little paperwork, okay? And then we can go grab something to eat.”
Her blond hair shifted off of her shoulders as she moved across the room and snatched the calculator out of my hands with excitement. My little Lexi was a numbers girl through and through. Hell, she could probably teach mathematics to high schoolers at this point. Which was why a calculator came in handy when I was in the process of trying to occupy her and finish up some work.
I rarely considered bringing my kid to work, but this actually made the second time in a week. Her nanny, Melinda, who attended NYU, had fall break last week and a huge economics exam to study for this week, and I tried not to rule her like a fucking dictator. She was a young girl, working her way through school and doing her best to straddle the line of adolescence and adulthood. I could see her clear as day, her struggles and determination, and when I looked really closely, I saw a younger version of myself rather than Melinda.
My mom had worked like a dog to support the five of us after my dad left, but there were only twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and fifty-two weeks in a year—and a very finite amount of money to be made.