Burned (Cunningham Security Book 5)

by A. K. Evans

  My confidence grew, and I’m now far more adventurous in the bedroom. Taking charge is no longer something I’m nervous to do, even though I prefer when Pierce leads it.

  He pulled his mouth from mine, looked down at me, and rasped, “Zara.”

  It was coming.

  Pierce knew it.

  He could feel it.

  Somehow, I think if he couldn’t feel it, he knew by the look in my eyes.

  He picked up his pace, driving in harder, and I was instantly on the verge.

  “Come with me, beautiful.”

  At his command, my back arched off the bed, my legs pressed tighter to his side, and I moaned through my orgasm. As sparks of pleasure shot through every inch of my body, my eyes remained glued to Pierce’s.

  I loved this even more.

  Watching him as his orgasm tore through him while mine did the same always did something incredible to my heart. I didn’t know if it was the intimacy of it or the look in his face when it happened, but I always liked the way it felt.

  Pierce collapsed on top of me, giving me a fair amount of his weight briefly before rolling to his back and taking me with him. We stayed like that a few minutes, catching our breath, before he said, “Happy birthday, baby.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed.

  Pierce’s body shook with laughter underneath mine.

  He gave me a squeeze and asked, “Are you looking forward to snow tubing today?”

  “I can’t wait,” I practically squealed.

  “You really do love the winter as much as I do,” he returned. “I’m glad I thought to find at least one thing to do with you outdoors each week so you can experience a real winter here.”

  He had.

  As soon as the temperatures started to dip, my excitement grew. Pierce began planning and he’d arranged for us to do something different each week. We’d already been snowboarding, skiing, and snowmobiling. During the holidays, he’d taken me to several holiday lights shows. I loved it all.

  Mostly, I loved him for making it all happen.

  “I’m glad I stayed indoors last winter,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed my new home nearly as much had I tried doing any of the things we’ve done together on my own. It just wouldn’t have been the same.”

  Pierce let out a sigh. “It still upsets me to think of you being so lonely for those first nine months you were here.”

  I lifted my head from his chest and brought my eyes to his. “It wasn’t fun feeling so lonely, but if it means that I’ve got you now, I’m totally okay with it.”

  Pierce gave my ass a squeeze and suggested, “As much as I’d love to stay here and hold you, we should get up and start getting ready so you can have a full day of fun on the mountain.”

  “Okay,” I replied just as my phone rang. I shifted my body and reached out for it. “It’s Gwen. She’s probably on her lunch break at school.”

  “Answer,” he urged.

  I slid my finger across the screen and greeted, “Hey, Gwen.”

  “Happy birthday, Z!” she exclaimed.

  A smile broke out on my face before I replied, “Thanks. You sound awfully chipper this morning.”

  Gwen let out a laugh. “If I’m honest, I’ve been storing that up just for you. From this point forward, you’re going to get the exhausted and utterly spent Gwen.”

  “Well, I appreciate your efforts,” I assured her. “How’s the baby-making business going?”

  She groaned. “I’m just over five weeks away from my due date, and I’ve had enough. I’m uncomfortable. I can’t sleep. And Jason is driving me crazy.”

  “Oh no. What’s going on?”

  “You mean other than the fact that he knows how tired I am to begin with, yet he still thinks I have the energy of a teenager?”

  “What does that mean?” I wondered.

  “Zara,” she said, her voice getting quiet.

  The sudden change alarmed me and I knew Pierce recognized it, too. His fingers pressed into the flesh of my backside a little harder and his concerned eyes came to mine.

  “Yeah?”

  “What would you say if I told you I was sitting here at work with only one shaved leg?”

  I shook my head in disbelief and asked, “What?”

  “My life is a disaster right now,” she began. “So, I’m not sleeping well at night as it is because I’m huge and I have to pee like every five seconds. Then, I’ve got to be up at five o’clock every morning so I can get ready and make it to work on time. I’d normally push through it, but Jason doesn’t seem to understand this all requires superhuman effort.”

  “What did he do?” I worried.

  A moment of silence passed before she raised her voice slightly and shared, “He thought it would be a good idea to join me in the shower this morning!”

  Gwen’s voice was loud enough that Pierce heard her. I instantly felt the tension leave his body.

  Gwen continued, “Zara, we have a shower stall. When I wasn’t pregnant, it was a tight fit, but we managed. Now I’ve got this huge belly and Jason thinks we can both fit in there.”

  “Why didn’t he just wait until you were finished? I imagine that would have been easier for both of you,” I said.

  “No, babe. I think he thinks that once the baby is here, he’ll never have sex again, so he’s trying to get as much of it in now as he can.”

  I grinned as I looked at Pierce. He was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Isn’t that a good thing, though? I mean, don’t a lot of pregnant women feel undesirable? He’s clearly still very attracted to you. That should make you feel good,” I reasoned.

  “It’s a good thing if I was actually feeling good, Zara. Jason came in, sat on the little ledge and urged me to come and ride him. Not even two minutes in, I was sweating. Do you know how hard it is to sweat in the shower in the winter?!”

  I burst out laughing. Pierce’s arms came around my back as he gently rolled me to the side, kissed my forehead, and muttered, “I’m going to get ready.”

  I gave him a nod while I tried to get my laughter under control. Once I’d accomplished that, Gwen went on, “I actually told him he had about thirty seconds left to get it done because I couldn’t do it any longer.”

  “Oh no. Poor Jason.”

  “Poor Jason?” she cried. “Don’t worry about him. He got it done in less than the thirty seconds I gave him. I am the one you should be feeling sorry for. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything else once he finished, which is precisely why I now only have one shaved leg.”

  I was in the midst of another fit of laughter when Pierce walked out of the bathroom with a warm cloth. He sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand to my knee, urging me to part my thighs. My laughter ceased to exist as he expertly cleaned up for me.

  He finished and Gwen pulled me from my thoughts of Pierce. “So, what’s that handsome man planning for your birthday?”

  “He’s taking me snow tubing,” I shared as I looked at him, warmth filling my heart.

  “Must be nice to be able to move your body so you can actually sit in a tube,” she declared. “If I got down in one of those, I wouldn’t be getting back up.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll have a beautiful baby in a few weeks and this will all seem like a distant memory,” I insisted. “He or she will be worth all of the suffering you’re going through now.”

  “Don’t get soft on me, Zara,” she demanded. “The minute I got out of my first trimester, the sappy hormones worked their way out of my body.”

  “You’re crazy,” I joked.

  She chuckled and admitted, “That very well may be true.” She paused a moment to let that settle before she decided, “I should probably go and try to eat something. I’m not sure where it’s supposed to go since this child has taken up all the space inside me, but apparently, it’s not acceptable to be pregnant and not eat.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh again. “Okay, Gwen. I’ll let you go. And when you go home tonight, jus
t tell Jason that he’s responsible for getting your other leg shaved for you.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that. Of course, that’ll mean that his eyes will have a better view of my vagina and he’ll want in again.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad problem to have,” I stressed to her.

  “Yeah, yeah. Alright, babe. Have a great birthday.”

  “Thanks, Gwen. Love you!”

  “You too,” she returned before we disconnected.

  I tossed my phone aside and saw Pierce had pulled on a pair of jeans. He was currently standing in the doorway to his master bathroom, brushing his teeth and staring at me with a look of adoration on his face.

  Deciding I wanted to be in his space instead of my own, I got up, pulled out a fresh pair of panties, and slid them up my legs. Then, I moved to the bathroom and pressed a kiss to his chest before I got my toothbrush.

  Pierce finished brushing ahead of me but made no move to walk away. He stood there, waiting for me to finish, the look never leaving his face. As much as I wanted to know what it was about, I didn’t ask. I figured he’d tell me whenever he was ready.

  Once I’d put my toothbrush down, I turned to Pierce, slid my arms around his waist, and pressed my nearly-naked body against his half-naked one. He brought both of his arms around me and held me tight.

  “You left me,” I murmured.

  His arms tightened and he asked, “What?”

  “In bed,” I clarified. “I liked having your body against mine, but you rolled me off and left me.”

  “Baby, I didn’t leave you,” he insisted. “I got up to get ready not because I didn’t like where I was, but because I didn’t need to hear the details of your conversation with your girl. From what I did hear, I could already tell it was heading into dangerous territory.”

  I laughed. “Gwen’s a little crazy,” I admitted. “But I love her.”

  “I know. I’m happy you have her.”

  “Me too,” I agreed. “But I’m worried for you.”

  “What? Why?”

  I dropped my head back and looked up at him. “Gwen and I are a lot alike. If I end up like her when I’m pregnant, you’ll probably hate me.”

  Something moved over Pierce’s face, something I couldn’t read. But it was something I knew I liked seeing.

  “What’s that look for?” I wondered, knowing I wouldn’t be able to wait for him to tell me on his own.

  He cocked an eyebrow and teased, “Thinking about having babies with me, beautiful?”

  I swallowed hard at the question.

  When I had said what I did about being pregnant, it was mostly just conversational. It didn’t mean I’d actually considered having babies with Pierce. Of course, now that he’d brought it up, all I could do was think about having babies with him.

  “Um…well,” I stammered. “One day I’d like to have babies. You’re really sexy, and I want cute babies. So, yeah, I guess I’m thinking about having babies with you. That is, if you want to make them with me.”

  Pierce grinned. “Oh, I want to make them with you,” he assured me pressing his erection into me.

  My teeth bit down on my bottom lip in an effort to control my excitement.

  Pierce pushed me for more and advised, “You’re talking about babies, Zara. Can I take that to mean you want a future with me?”

  A future with Pierce.

  I absolutely wanted that.

  And considering it wasn’t much more than a year ago when I’d officially sworn off romantic relationships, admitting to myself that I wanted a future with Pierce was huge.

  Confessing it to him would be colossal.

  Which is exactly why I declared, “I want a future with you.”

  Pierce dropped his mouth to mine, kissed me, and lifted me clean off the floor. He threw me to the bed and commenced another round of sex. This one, like the one before, was merely practice for when we decided it was time to have our babies.

  Our babies.

  Yeah, I definitely wanted that.

  It was when Pierce and I were on our way to go snow tubing that my phone rang again.

  Pulling it out of the cup holder I’d set it in, I saw it was my mom calling.

  “Hi, Mom,” I greeted her.

  “Happy birthday, Zara.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t know if I’d catch you or if you’d be out doing something,” she started. “The last time we talked you were getting ready to head out snowmobiling. You mentioned that Pierce was planning something for your birthday, but you didn’t know what.”

  This was true.

  The last I’d spoken with my mother was two days after the New Year holiday roughly two weeks ago. Pierce and I had been getting ready to go out snowmobiling, and while I knew that we were planning to take off for both my birthday and his, we hadn’t yet decided what we’d be doing.

  Over the last few months, things with my mom had settled a bit. We’d decided at brunch the morning after her arrival on my doorstep that we both needed to take some time to let things cool down. If nothing else, we were both on the same page with not wanting the constant fighting between us.

  So, following her unannounced trip out to see me in an attempt to rectify the situation between us, she went back home and allowed us to have some time. A few weeks passed before I spoke to her again. Our conversations remained relatively superficial. I know it wasn’t what she had hoped for, but it was all I could do for now.

  On the bright side, she hadn’t thrown my inability to just move past the situation in my face. I took that to mean good things. Unfortunately, she still didn’t seem to want to really work through everything that happened. Despite all her wrongdoings and the strain it put on my relationship with my parents, Michelle was still living with them. They accepted her with those faults, or at least overlooked them, but refused to work through and acknowledge how the things she did were hurtful to me.

  For me, as much as I wanted to repair the relationship with my family, especially my mother, I still struggled to get past the betrayal. And I still didn’t trust them to be there for me the way a family should be. For the time being, I’d resolved myself to the fact that the way it was now was better than it had been in months, even if it wasn’t what it used to be.

  We talked on a more regular basis, but I kept a lot to myself.

  I didn’t tell her about the exciting things happening with Petals, or the fact that Lexi got me a full feature in a magazine. I also didn’t talk much about the friendships I’d forged since I opened my heart again to new people. While my mom knew that I’d made friends, she didn’t know that they’d stood up for me when Brad came and tried to win me back. She didn’t know that I had spent several weeks helping Leni redecorate her studio when the construction had been completed. I didn’t share that I was excited at the prospect of my new friend possibly getting romantic with one of Pierce’s closest friends.

  And I certainly didn’t share any of the deep-seated, meaningful conversations I had with Pierce.

  Ones like the one we had this morning about babies and our future.

  Maybe that was selfish of me.

  Maybe it was self-preservation.

  Whether it was one, the other, or a bit of both, I didn’t know. But regardless, it’s what it was. Our relationship, I believed, was going to be a lifelong work in progress at this point.

  I could live with that.

  So, I’d gotten used to the conversations like this. There was still some awkwardness, but it was better than it had been.

  “Yeah, we finally made a plan and Pierce is actually taking me snow tubing today,” I shared.

  “Oh, that sounds fun.”

  “Yeah, I’m excited,” I said. “We’ll go out to dinner later tonight.”

  I could hear the sincerity in her voice when she replied, “I hope you have a great time.”

  “I will. How’s everything going there?” I asked.

  My mom and I spent the next ten minutes on the p
hone chatting.

  Five minutes after I ended the call with my mom, Pierce pulled into the parking lot at Parks Ridge Ski Resort. It was in Windsor’s neighboring town of Rising Sun, and was home to the town’s Olympic medalists from the Blackman Boards team, a group of friends who’d been snowboarding together since they were kids.

  “Ready?” Pierce asked.

  I gave him a nod and a smile. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go celebrate your birthday, baby.”

  With that, Pierce and I got out of his truck and celebrated my birthday by having the best time snow tubing. We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

  Later that night, after dinner, we were back at Pierce’s house.

  Blaze and Callie had both been showered with affection before we settled in on the couch to watch a movie. Pierce told me he would have taken me out to one, but I wanted to be cuddled up on the couch with him instead.

  No sooner had we decided on a movie and turned it on when Pierce called, “Zara?”

  He was sitting in the corner of the couch, his feet up on the coffee table. My head was resting in his lap, my body covered by a cozy blanket.

  I moved my eyes from the television and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been thinking all day,” he started. “Probably since right around the time you got on the phone with Gwen this morning.”

  I recalled the look he had been giving me this morning, the one I was too afraid to ask him about.

  “Okay? About what?”

  He took in a deep breath and blew it out before he clarified, “I was initially just thinking when you were laying there in my bed on the phone, but then you started talking to me about babies and a future.”

  I felt my heart rate pick up and my eyes widen.

  He wasn’t ready for babies already, was he?

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry for too long. Pierce continued, “I wanted to ask you to move in with me.”

  My body, which had already been still, went rock solid. “Really?”

  Pierce nodded and confirmed, “Yeah. I’ve thought a lot about it lately and this morning solidified it for me. I loved seeing you there in my bed, naked and laughing on the phone.”