by Quinn, Taryn
Austin clapped my back. “You okay, man? You don’t look good.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just gonna lie on this floor for a day or two. Don’t mind me.”
“Seriously, not this floor. My boots stuck to it the whole way in.” He pulled me more upright on the stool and kind of shoved me against the bar so I would have some support. The guy was way more athletically built than I’d realized upon first glance. Made sense though, since he was a firefighter.
All I pushed around all day was pencils and Pampers.
Luckily, I was still reasonably physically fit due to all the hours I spent in the gym to compensate for all the sex I wasn’t having.
Probably a good thing, or who knows how large a family I’d have now. Evidently, it wasn’t safe for me to recreationally knock boots.
What had Hannah worn that first night anyway? Pumps?
Welcome to the Brady Bunch part deux.
When I didn’t reply, Austin smiled. I had a feeling he could tell my thoughts were spinning like a Tilt-a-Whirl. “Oh, and sorry, Joey’s almost eleven. She’s at her first sleepover tonight, and I was going stir-crazy at home, so here I am. She has trouble making friends, and if this one doesn’t work out…” He rubbed his hand over his scruff and exhaled heavily. “Anyway, think you’re out of luck with the playmate situation. But, hey, with your new baby on the way, at least your kids will always have a friend, right?”
Right. Bright side.
Dots encroached on my field of vision. Many, many dots. “I don’t suppose you have a spare oxygen tank in your vehicle?”
“Dude, you are bad off. You probably shouldn’t be drinking. How about I get you home?”
“I should go home. You’re right. I’m not this guy. I’m decent. Honorable.” I shoved away the whiskey bottle. I’d drank far more of it than I should have. “I wore a condom the first night. Responsibly. Not tonight though. But she was already pregnant. So, doesn’t count.” I grabbed his shirtfront as I stumbled to my feet. “Right?”
“Sure thing, pal, whatever you say.” He patted my back and turned me toward the bar again. “Hate to ruin this Oprah moment, but you have the money for that whiskey, right? My card’s maxed beyond my tab.”
“Oh, sure. Right. Of course.” I took out my wallet and thumbed out a credit card. I was about to call for the bartender when she swept out and grabbed it off the bar. “His too,” I called.
Austin shook his head. “Nah, man, thanks, but I’m not that bad off. Just a little squeezed from trying to buy a house for us and getting situated in a new town. For fuck’s sake, she’s gonna be a teenager soon. Her clothes are never right, and kids are so damn mean.” He cracked his knuckles. “Anyway, thanks.”
Somehow I smiled. “You’re welcome. You remind me of—” My smile fell away.
He wasn’t Billy. Billy was dead. Just because I’d spent a few minutes drinking with this guy didn’t make us buddies. And he definitely didn’t replace my dead best friend.
Nothing could bring Billy back. Eventually, I’d come to terms with that.
Lily was mine now. No one would come and spirit her away to her real family. Just as Hannah was pregnant. That baby was a reality too.
Wasn’t it? She intended to have the child, right?
She had to. I mean, she had all the choices in the world, but we’d made that child and so what if I wasn’t ready? Life didn’t follow a schedule.
Too bad I only grasped that when my blood was humming and I wasn’t quite stable on my feet.
“Remind you of who?” Austin asked.
I shook my head and it nearly rolled off my shoulders and across the bar. “Just someone I lost. A friend. The best friend I ever had.”
“Ah, Christ, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s okay. It’s been five months give or take.” As if that made it all right.
It didn’t. Nothing ever would be again.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Austin said as I signed the slip the bartender presented to me. She snatched it and returned my card and was gone again in a flash.
She had an unusual style of bartending, I had to give her that.
“Going home and sleeping it off?”
“Yeah, that too in a few minutes. But how do you feel about some foosball first?”
I followed the direction of his gaze toward the row of tables in the back. There was a pool table, a couple of dart boards, some video game machines, and the aforementioned foosball table.
“Closing time is in twenty,” Miss Personality called.
I pushed away from the bar. I debated slipping the whiskey bottle in my jacket pocket but decided against it. My quota of bad decisions had already been reached. “Sure. Maybe I can win one out of two.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. I was foosball champion two years running at Syracuse.”
“You went to SU too?”
Austin nodded and removed his ball cap, revealing a disordered mop of short brown hair. “Dropped out two years in. I wanted to party, and it was expensive to get a degree in that particular occupation.” He laughed and moved to one side of the foosball table. “Might go back though, if it’ll help me move up. Or maybe just for personal enrichment.”
I took my side and gripped the edge of the table. My buzz had faltered briefly, but it was back now. I was going to hang on to that fleeting feeling of bliss for as long as I could. “Party for as long as you can. Adulthood lasts the rest of your damn life.”
“Ain’t that the truth, brother.” Austin flipped a few rows of his foosball dudes and flashed me a wolfish smile. “Let’s play.”
Sixteen
“Shh, shh, that’s a good girl.”
I rocked Lily as she whimpered softly and wondered how I’d gone from being painfully solitary to a mother of two in a matter of months.
Two-word answer: Asher Wainwright.
I wasn’t Lily’s mother, just the nanny. Her mother was gone, and now she had a father who was afraid to love her and a great-grandmother who loved her enough for half a dozen people.
Maybe I wouldn’t be Lily’s nanny anymore. It wasn’t as if I’d gotten used to the job yet. But before I’d told Asher I was pregnant, I had never really considered the possibility he might not take part in the kid’s life.
Might not want me to be part of Lily’s life either, once he knew.
I smoothed a kiss over Lily’s sweaty brow and smiled as she clutched my shirt in her chubby fist. I hadn’t wanted to put on any of Asher’s clothes, and I didn’t have any of my own there except what I’d worn that day.
A quiet rage simmered inside me, layered under the hurt and fear. I’d worked so hard to build a sense of stability for myself, both financially and emotionally. That had meant pulling away a bit from the world, as I grieved and tried to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Now everything was in flux.
The only thing I knew for certain was I wanted my child. Wrong timing or not, we’d make a way for ourselves.
If that was without Asher, then it just was. I wasn’t going to beg. I also wasn’t going to tolerate being an emotional punching bag while he processed his own shit.
I swallowed deeply as I gazed down at a now sleeping Lily in the light from the moon. I didn’t want to lose her from my life. It was nuts I could’ve become this attached this soon, but somehow we’d bonded.
As I’d thought I had bonded with her asshole of a father. The man who was currently running the streets doing God knows what.
I wasn’t looking at the clock. Wasn’t fretting at all.
Liar.
I didn’t know where he was. If he was okay. I did know this behavior was not like the Asher I’d come to know. Whether this fit of pique would last or just be a passing moment, I wasn’t sure.
Either way, I’d have to shore up my defenses. He had a way of sneaking under them.
Down the hall, a door closed. Softly this time, not with all the bluster of a couple of hours ago. I sat
up straighter in the chair, drawing Lily close. She didn’t stir beyond nuzzling her drooly little chin underneath my neck.
I stared at the open doorway, waiting. Barely breathing. Even so, I wasn’t prepared when Asher appeared in it, looking so big and rumpled and…male.
So very male.
Something inside me twinged, and it definitely wasn’t annoyance. There was some lust in there too, but not only that. When he leaned against the doorjamb, his hair all messy and dark and wet from the snow, his clothes wrinkled, his eyes heavy with a combination of fatigue and things I didn’t want to think too much about...
I wanted to hold him. And yes, get naked and climb in his lap, but also be the one to comfort him and rub those lines away from his eyes.
Even if coming clean about our situation had inadvertently helped put them there.
My first inclination was to rise and go to him, despite what had happened. I’d been the first one to slam out of that room, and that had been wrong too. But the instant I moved, I smelled the alcohol on him. It wafted out of his pores, or off his jacket.
Ugh, I didn’t even know.
I cupped the baby’s head in my hand and pressed my back against the chair. I could only imagine my expression.
But I didn’t have to imagine his. He was staring at us in a way that tangled up everything inside me in complicated knots. His gaze was hot, but tender too. He never looked away.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough, as abrasive as uneven concrete. “I’m still pretty drunk.”
“I could smell you.”
“Really?” He lifted his sleeve and sniffed. “Think you smell the bar on me. I didn’t have that much.”
“No? Then why is your voice slurred?” I didn’t add that it was also sexy, which was ridiculous. But it was as if normally hyper speed, ultra-focused Asher had dialed himself back a few notches. Leaving him a little slower, a little softer, a little more unguarded.
One hundred and twenty percent dangerous as he walked toward us with long, unhurried steps. The nursery wasn’t that big, but it felt as if our eyes locked forever while he crossed the room.
“I had some whiskey. Got drunk. It helps me not to think so hard. Not in a rush to have it end.” He licked his lips. “Are you going to kill my buzz, Hannah?”
Asher saying my name should be a criminal offense. “I’m just sitting here, minding my business.”
“You’re sitting there, rocking my baby.” He leaned over and braced his hands on the arms of the rocking chair, and my heart went into overdrive. I would’ve sworn I heard it knocking against my ribs. “Both my babies. Isn’t that right?”
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? He’d admitted he was drunk. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. It wasn’t repulsive. If anything, that hint of the forbidden pulled at me. As if I could ride his high with him.
A high I couldn’t have on my own any longer. Not for quite some time.
“Your lips are trembling.” He touched my lower lip with his thumb and it was a damn miracle I didn’t crush Lily in reaction. Every part of me braced.
He sensed it, because he backed off and tucked his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said again after a moment.
“For what? For coming home drunk?” Only after the word was out did I realize how foolish I was being. This wasn’t my home. Even if he’d invited me to stay there, it was just for Lily.
I was getting all tangled up in something that wasn’t meant for me.
“Yeah.”
“What about for leaving in the first place? For getting mad at me because we made a baby together?”
He fisted his hands in his pockets, making them bulge. “I’m not mad at you,” he said quietly. “I never was. I regret causing you to think that. It was a fucking dream you walked back into my life.”
Before I could reply, he touched the top of Lily’s head, just a brush of his fingers, and strode out of the room.
He’s drunk.
He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
It may not even be true.
A fucking dream? Really?
Then again, our day together had been pretty unreal before I’d spilled the baby crackers. Dream was actually a pretty apt description.
Except he’d claimed to have a buzz—and his voice had definitely indicated that—but he seemed entirely too lucid for someone who’d spent a couple of hours drinking.
Unless Asher even got drunk differently than other people.
I rolled my achy shoulders. He did everything differently than other men. Was that why I couldn’t keep my distance?
But I didn’t run after him. No, I took my sweet ass time. Once I was sure Lily was still asleep, I tucked her in her crib and turned on the little music mobile that seemed to bring her comfort. She didn’t move. Hopefully, she’d get some rest now that she had a full belly again, thanks to the bottle of formula I’d given her earlier.
After a quick stop in the bathroom to freshen up—and give myself about fifteen pep talks—I went down the hall to the master bedroom. Clothes and shoes were all over the floor, as if Asher had let them fly.
On the bed, Asher was sprawled out, completely nude.
Completely hard.
It was insanely stupid that I didn’t turn around. Clearly, he wasn’t in a talking mood. From the state of his erection, there was a good chance he’d, uh, primed the pump since he’d left the nursery.
But I didn’t want to talk either. I definitely didn’t want to fight. He’d apologized, and God, I wanted to believe he meant it.
In the middle of the night, nothing seemed wrong.
What felt wrong was standing on the opposite side of this doorway another minute, watching him watch me.
I took off my shirt and let it drop onto the floor with Asher’s clothes. He leaned up on his elbows, staring at me intently. Memorizing every detail as I undid my braid and snapped the band around my wrist. I didn’t take off my panties. I didn’t know why. Maybe so I’d have one last barrier if my common sense returned.
Or maybe I just wanted to watch him fuck me while I still wore my chaste white cotton.
I crawled across the bed to him on my hands and knees. I was still self-conscious about my body, more so as I knew it was already starting to change, but it was hard to feel anything less than beautiful when Asher’s gaze was drinking me down. He held out a hand and drew me toward his chest, groaning as my breasts pressed against his skin.
“I like coming home to you,” he whispered before our mouths met with just as much hunger as earlier. And just as much as that very first night, when we’d chosen to get naked by firelight rather than talk.
This was a much easier language for us to share.
I slipped my hands into his hair and nibbled on his lips, bearing down harder as he cupped my ass. He squeezed hard before delving between my thighs to toy with my panties. Rubbing me through them, and then under them, his fingers finding the heart of me unerringly and slipping inside.
“Wet for me.”
I bit his lower lip. “That’s the state you left me in.”
His groan blazed through me, a sound I echoed at the deep press of his fingers. He pushed all the way into me before drawing out in a slow, slippery slide. He did it another time, harder. My clit throbbed and I ground against him, fumbling for his cock. The damp tip slid over my nipple, and I wasn’t sure which of us moaned louder.
He rolled me beneath him and spent his share of time sucking on my nipples. Both of them, including the one that had to taste like him. His pupils blew wide in the moonlight as he carefully tended to me, his teeth sharp, his tongue so erotic. But he was gentle with my breasts. He knew I was pregnant now, and he must’ve remembered my reaction in the hot tub earlier, even through the alcohol. His gaze remained on my face, minutely gauging my reaction to every movement he made.
All the while, his heavy cock slid up and down my cleft, making me squirm and bite my lip.
He inched down my body, dropping ki
sses as he went, hovering over my belly. I didn’t know how he’d react, but he stared at it for the longest time until I had to touch him. I brushed my hand through his hair, and then he rested his cheek on my palm.
There weren’t words, so I didn’t try to fill the silence with them.
The momentary sweetness made me warm all over, but in no time, he was slipping downward again. He kissed my navel and continued on, nudging aside my panties to lick me where I was already so soaked. My clit pulsed under his attention, and I strained toward his mouth, spreading my legs wider while he lapped at me. He didn’t rip my panties or remove them, just enjoyed me despite them.
God, he enjoyed me.
As I enjoyed him. I relished every push of his fingers inside me, every swipe of his tongue, every heated glance meant to ensure I was with him each step of the way.
The orgasm rolled through me, swift and merciless. I smothered my cries in the pillow beside me, digging my nails into the back of his neck when he turned into an overachiever and decided to give me another. He didn’t even pause long enough to let me catch my breath.
My only option was to come. And come again.
I still hadn’t fully stopped quivering when he rose onto his knees and gripped his cock. He moved my panties out of the way and circled his shaft over my still overstimulated clit before he leaned down to kiss me, so sweetly the backs of my eyes burned. I tasted the alcohol mixed with me on his tongue, the combination hotter than it had any right to be.
“Hold on to me.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck as he adjusted my legs around his hips and drove inside me. I wasn’t even sure if my panties were still intact.
I so didn’t care.
He swallowed my moans, extending our kiss while he withdrew and buried himself inside me once more. He did it again and again, his movements deep and decisive, his arm like steel where he braced it beside me on the pillows.
So much for drinking too much affecting a man’s ability to fuck. It certainly wasn’t affecting Asher.
But it was time to make him just as crazy as he’d made me.
Scraping my nails down his back, I flexed around his cock inside me and licked my lips, nice and slow. Then I slid my hand into my still semi-intact panties to strum my clit, testing both of us. I had never done this before in front of a man. Had never touched myself just to feel good, not for the express purpose of a climax.