by Aiden Bates
“Do you trust me, Riley?”
“Mm.” His eyelashes fluttered against my skin. “Trusted you from the moment I met you, Max.”
“And then?”
“And then I didn’t. Things got…complicated. I was scared.”
“Yeah. I was scared too.”
“Takes a big man to admit that.”
I grinned. “You already know that I’m plenty big, sweetheart.”
“You’re right. The perfect size.” His fingertips trailed along my side, the slightest hint of a tickle. “There’s not a modest bone in you, is there?”
“I don’t need one.”
“Mm. Suppose you don’t.” His fingers stopped at my hips, pressing against the bone there, rimmed with muscle. “I always imagined it would be like this, you know.”
“Like what?”
He rolled his eyes. “Like this. Me. My Alpha. Lying in bed together, completely exhausted. Completely in love.”
I brushed his hair down over his temple. It was still damp with sweat from our lovemaking. Darker brown than normal in the way it crowned his forehead. “You do a lot of imagining before you met me?”
“God, you have no idea.” He rolled off me, giving me a shiver as the cool air fell upon the freshly bare skin of my chest. “My parents are in love like this, I think. I could always tell. The way they moved around each other, even when they were just doing something conventional. Making dinner. Doing laundry. They moved like they always knew where the other one was headed. Like a planet and its moon.”
“Mm. Happy family.” My voice caught in my throat. “Sounds nice.”
“Your parents weren’t happy?”
“My parents barely knew each other.” It wasn’t an easy story to tell. Not one that came easy for me either—but Riley was mine now. He’d given me things I’d never even dared to dream of, let alone expect for myself. He had a right to know. “Mom inherited a little family farm from her parents. Deep in debt from the moment they bought the land until the day she buried them in it.”
“Max…you don’t have to…”
“No.” I pressed my finger to his lips. “Just listen. I want to tell you.”
He nodded, shifting back on his pillow and resting his jaw on his hand. Watching me. Waiting.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know all the details. She didn’t really like talking about them. From what I’ve pieced together over time…one day, some man from the bank comes around. Finance men—I’m lucky you trust me, Riley. Men who deal with money are rotten to the core, more often than not. It was up to him to decide whether to give her a little more time on the place before it went into foreclosure. My guess is, he offered her the kind of deal men in power ought to respect their positions enough not to make.”
“And she took it,” Riley breathed.
“Nine months later, I was born.” I laughed, bitter as overbrewed coffee served black. “She lost the place eventually anyway, of course. It’s not a system that she was ever set up to win in. I think she tried to track him down as I got a little older, but never turned anything up. Men like that are good at disappearing if they don’t want to be found.”
“God…so when I told you I was pregnant…You asked for a paternity test…”
I grimaced. “I was scared. Shitless, in fact. Either I’d done you the same wrong my father did my mother, or some other sick fuck had. It was a kneejerk reaction. Too much time spent around Hayward, maybe.”
“We can still get one, you know. I don’t mind.”
“No. Don’t worry about that. You trust me, Riley. And me—I trust you too.”
“Where…where is she now?” There was a brokenness in Riley’s eyes that told me he’d already guessed that this story didn’t have a happy ending.
“Died a while back. Breast cancer. Diagnosis came too late.” I reached over, slipping my fingers into the spaces between his. “She’d met someone else by then, though. He treated her all right. Gave her a daughter—my baby sister.” I smiled genuinely as I looked over to the painting on my wall, the colors swirled together like fall leaves caught in the wind. “They painted that together. Samantha’s in art school now—I’m putting her through it. About half the sculptures here in the apartment are hers.”
“And the other half?”
“My mom’s. Got a storage unit downtown with about fifty more of her pieces, but you know how it is. Even penthouses in New York have a limit on space.”
Riley pulled my hand over onto his stomach suddenly, smoothing my fingers down over his skin. Maybe I was imagining it, but it felt a little like he was starting to show. The slightest roundness to his belly. A warmth beneath it that I never wanted to stop feeling against my skin.
“I think it’s a girl,” he admitted. “Don’t ask me how I know. I just…”
I pressed against him a little harder. “A girl?”
He nodded. “I just know.”
It did my head in, that knowing. One minute, the world was calm and comfortable and still. The next, it was exploding in a sea of emotions. Like I’d been living my whole life in black and white for so long, and now it was blooming out in Technicolor.
“A girl,” I repeated again. “We’re having a baby girl.”
Riley blushed. “I wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not—it’s still too soon to be sure, really, but—”
I rolled over, kissing him deeply and cupping his jaw in the palm of my hand. “We’re going to need to go pick out paint, you know.”
“For what room?” Riley laughed. “I can’t exactly ask you to give up your office, Max.”
I pulled away, looking down at him with a smile that I couldn’t seem to fight back. Hell—I didn’t want to.
A daughter. We were having a daughter.
It gave me an idea.
“You should rest,” I told him, caressing his cheek. “You’re gonna want to be up early in the morning.”
His eyes narrowed with delight. “Morning sex, huh? Too tired to go again tonight?”
I laughed. “Not in the slightest. But…there’s something we should do. Bright and early. First thing.”
“Breakfast?” he asked hopefully.
My grin widened. “I’ll take you out to brunch after. But first…there’s something we need to get out of the way.”
“Whatever you want, Max,” Riley purred sleepily. He cuddled against me again, wrapping a leg across my hips and tangling his fingers in my hair. “In the morning, your wish is my command.”
19
Riley
We spent two blissful weeks of breakfasts together. As it turned out, I never could hold out until brunch.
“This is amazing,” I moaned, mouth full of flaky pastry dough as we strolled down the sidewalk one morning. “What is this?”
“Half donut, half croissant.” Max chuckled, guiding me around a living statue street performer. The man tipped his hat to us as Max dropped a twenty in his cup. “I think they’re calling it a cronut.”
“Ugh. Sounds gross. Tastes delicious.” I took another bite, revealing a surprise chocolate center. “Holy shit. Half donut, half croissant, half pain au chocolat?”
“Your math is atrocious,” Max said absently, checking the map on his phone.
“Good thing you’re balancing our budget, huh?” I elbowed him gently, but he wasn’t listening. Whatever big thing he had to show me was taking up all of his attention—had been all morning. I think he’d given in to stopping at the bakery on the way to our destination just so I’d fill my mouth so full of baked goods that he could focus. “Are we almost there?”
Suddenly, Max smiled and looked up from his phone. “Not almost.” He nodded at the building we were standing in front of, and I turned to look.
It was a massive old brownstone, the kind that was old enough and pretty enough someone had taken the time to restore it instead of knocking it down for a high rise. Five stories high, with a metal fire escape zippering down its side into the alleyway next to it. On one sid
e, there was a little Italian restaurant that looked like it had been pulled straight out of Naples. On the other, another bakery, the scent of fresh bread wafting out its doors.
The ground floor of the building Max was staring at was empty, though. I could see inside through the front windows, glossy and clean. Its walls were mirrored along one side, pressed in by a ballet bar. The floors were wood, polished to shine. In one corner of the window, a FOR SALE sign was perched with a number beneath it. Across the sign was a sticker, canceling out the sign’s original meaning. SOLD.
“Help me out here, Max,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away. “What am I looking at?”
“Funny you should ask,” he answered, pointing upward. “Third floor is an art gallery—or it will be. Recently purchased, of course—so the lucky new owner will have to spend a little time refurbishing the space. Fourth and fifth are an apartment. Pretty big one, actually.” When I glanced up at him, there was a wistful grin on his face. “Whoever bought this place must’ve had one hell of a severance package.”
I tried to take a breath in, but it was like my lungs couldn’t hold enough air. “And the first floor?”
“Mm. See, I was hoping you’d ask that. The first floor’s my favorite part. Wanna go inside?” He produced a key from his pocket, jingling it in front of my face.
I snatched it from him and rushed to the door, jamming the key toward the lock with such speed that I missed it the first two times I tried to slip it into its spot.
Inside, it smelled like resin and vanilla. The space had been cleared out by its previous owner, but I knew enough about what I was seeing to know what it had been.
“A dance studio,” I said softly, walking over to the bar and running my fingers along its cold, shiny metal.
“Ballet, actually,” Max corrected me. “Last owner left to perform in Moscow. Wanted to make sure that its next owner would use it well.”
“What…Max, what’s all this about?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“You haven’t figured it out yet?”
I held up a finger. “I have. But I want to make sure that you’re not toying with me. I need to hear you say it.”
Max shrugged, his hands in his pockets and sunshine in his eyes. “I bought the building, Riley. This whole place—it’s ours.”
“When?” I couldn’t believe the first word out of my mouth sounded so much like an accusation—it was just that it still didn’t seem real.
“Early this morning. You were still snoring in bed.” He came to me, touching his fingertip gently to the tip of my nose then holding me by the hips. “Bank was happy to work with me. Guess they’ve been trying to get this place off the market for a while.”
“And it’s…it really belongs to you?”
“To us, Riley. You said so yourself—there wasn’t room for a baby in my old place. That was a bachelor pad.” He pulled me a little closer, until his lips were barely an inch away from mine. “This is a home.”
“The studio?” I asked, still reeling. “It’s…it’s ours too?”
“Yours, actually. If you want it.” He looked around the space, eyes shining. “Thought you might want to start teaching some classes. There’s space upstairs for it too.” He laughed. “There’s even. Hmm. Several poles up there, if you feel so inclined.”
A dance studio. A gallery for all of Max’s mother’s work. And not one, but two floors of apartment space for us to raise our kids in. Or, well—kid. I shouldn’t have been getting ahead of myself like that.
It was just too fucking perfect. Getting ahead of myself seemed like all I knew how to do just then.
“So that’s how this is going to go, then. You see if you can get a job with Sterling…”
“In a while,” Max said with a shrug. “Like I said, the gallery’s going to need some renovation work. Thought I might tackle it myself. It’s been too long since I’ve done something useful with my hands.” Suddenly, his grin turned wicked. “Outside of the bedroom, anyway.”
“And I teach—what? Barre downstairs, stripperobics up top?”
“If you like. If not, you don’t have to work at all. I’ve got money saved away for a while…You could just relax, if you wanted. Be a home—”
“Don’t say homemaker,” I said with a laugh. “My mother tried that. Drove her crazy. A studio would be perfect, Max.”
“So you like it then?”
I beamed. “I love it. God—I love you.”
I threw my arms around his neck, claiming every inch of his face with a new kiss until my lips found his. The taste of chocolate mingled between our tongues, sweet and light.
“Slow down, sweetheart. I was thinking we might at least make it upstairs before we started getting frisky.”
I raised an eyebrow. “There’s a bed waiting up there for us already, isn’t there?”
“There might be.” Max wound his hands around my body, cupping my ass then giving it a gentle smack. “Unless you wanted to visit those stripper poles first…”
“You’re terrible,” I laughed.
“But you love me anyway,” he countered.
“I do. So…race you there?”
He shook his head, then scooped me up in his arms, bridal style. I yelped as my feet left the ground—but I didn’t have to worry. Max was strong—strong enough that I could trust him not to let me fall.
“Thought I’d carry you,” he said softly. “Come on. There’s a lot I want you to see yet.”
“Then brunch,” I reminded him, the excitement stirring hunger in my stomach all over again.
He laughed. “Okay. Then brunch.”
Epilogue
Damon
Electronic beats pumped from the speakers as I gripped the back of my chair, digging my heels into the stage and arching my back stiff and straight. The water poured down from the rafters overhead, splashing hard against my chiseled abs like a sudden rainstorm.
The crowd went fucking wild and I smirked.
Hell, yeah. Just like Flashdance.
But as the applause simmered down and I grabbed my chair to head offstage, who would’ve guessed it—those fuckers at table nine felt the need to pipe up again.
“What a slut!” a redheaded Alpha called out, cupping his hands around his mouth to make the sound carry. The Alpha in the seat next to him rose to his feet and started barking like a dog that had been kept out in the backyard for too long on too short of a chain.
Charming. Bachelor parties—at the Ballroom, we either hated them, or we especially hated them.
I was honestly surprised that they were still going at it. They’d pulled the same shit during Anders’ set, which had resulted in Anders climbing down from his oversized martini glass and beating the barker in the mouth with his prop olive while he kicked a drink off the table into the redhead’s face. I’d have thought after that, they would’ve given it a rest—but not a chance. If anything, they were getting louder and rowdier than ever.
As I shook my head, carrying my chair off the stage, I made a point to tell Carlos to stop serving them. They should’ve been shut down at the bar the second that they started interrupting the show. I was surprised Foster hadn’t come down from his office and kicked them out yet.
“Ooh, better run away faster, big boy!” the redhead called after me. “Come on, is that the best that chubby ass of yours can waddle?”
“Yeah, Fatty!” the barker added.
I gritted my teeth. If they were going to be assholes, I would’ve appreciated a little inventiveness on their end. Hadn’t their mothers ever told them that if they were going to be cruel, it was only funny if they were clever about it?
“You’re not fat,” Noah said pointedly, seeing that look in my eyes as I came off the stage. “Don’t listen to those pricks.”
But of course, back in the audience they’d latched onto the insult like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer. “Fatty! Fatty!” they were chanting, cheering in the same way their dumbass frat brothers must’ve cheered while they
were in college, drinking all their brain cells away.
“I’m gonna go out there,” I warned Noah.
He shook his head. “You’re not going out there.”
I nodded, fuming. “I’m gonna give ‘em a piece of my mind.”
“Damon—no, wait!”
“Hey assholes!” I shouted, jogging back onto the stage. “You wanna bark at something, you mangy mutts? How’s this for a moon to howl at?”
I turned, flexing my ass in the way I knew made it dimple with muscle. Five days a week at the gym had to pay off at some point, right? I laid a smack on it that reverberated throughout the entire ballroom, sending another cheer roaring up from the crowd.
This time when the redhead cupped his hands around his mouth, my regular at table eight rose and cracked his knuckles menacingly. MMA fighter, recently returned from a stint in the can—and he looked it, too. Suddenly neutered, the redhead flushed the same color as his hairline and lowered his hands back onto his lap. The barker, realizing he was about half the size of the man presently threatening to beat his head in, slunk back down into his seat with his tail between his legs.
I grinned. Know your audience, I guessed.
Still, would’ve been nice not to be heckled. Especially considering that it was my birthday.
“You were amazing up there, Damon!” Riley threw his arms around my neck, giving me a tight hug as I reappeared backstage. He was showing now—five months and already looking like he was ready to pop.
“You know you’re having twins, right?” I gestured at Riley’s stomach and he laughed.
“Don’t—Max is already on that train. You shouldn’t encourage him.”
Max gave me a little wave from behind Riley, bearing a box of chocolates and a dozen balloons.
“Happy birthday,” Max said as he handed my gifts off to me. “Glad you’re not letting those assholes get you down.”
“Please. Like I’d ever,” I told him, accepting the gifts with a smile. It wasn’t true, of course, but they didn’t need to know that. “Thanks for coming around, you guys.”