Page 31

FIFTEEN

MILLIE

This baby, I’d decided, was a scheming, cunning pain in my ass.

There’s no way I’d be thinking these thoughts on my own. The ones going around and around in my head.

It had been gradual over the past few weeks, but I could no longer deny it. Reliving my kiss with Tanner had evolved way beyond how his lips felt on mine.

I’d journeyed back to the beginning, the first kiss outside my dorm room, and everything that came after it. His hands stroking along my bare skin, his fingers easing inside me while his tongue teased between my thighs.

All of it.

It was driving me crazy, and not in the blasé I can ignore it way. In the way that I needed to do something about it before it got any worse.

The heat wasn’t helping either. Halloween was in thirty days. The weather was cooler, yet my internal temperature could rival a furnace. Hot had become my new normal, but thinking all my Tanner thoughts was only making me hotter.

If I were sensible, I would ease out of my bed and away from the softly snoring baseball player whose arm had been wrapped around me most of the night, remove the pajamas I’d fallen asleep wearing, and get into a cold shower. But the baby seemed to have stripped me of all logical thought.

Even the times I’d woken up to pee, I’d returned straight back into Tanner’s warm embrace without thinking twice.

What’s more, I knew I’d just experienced the best night of sleep since I’d gotten pregnant. The sun was waking up later, therefore I was waking up later, but I didn’t need to look at the clock to know I’d not slept this late in a long time.

Usually when I woke, I was too starving and so depleted in energy I could barely make it into the kitchen. The baby screamed at me for sustenance in the form of the smoothie Tanner brought me, and if I didn’t get it stat I’d be close to waging war.

But I’d been awake over an hour now listening to Tanner’s breathing, yet I hadn’t had so much as a hunger pang.

I was perfectly content staring at his forearm draped across the comforter. I stopped short of tracing along the thick corded muscles and soft, light brown hair, over his long fingers and short-clipped nails. I’d never thought of forearms being sexy before, but this one was.

That’s right, an hour staring at a sexy arm . Told you I was going crazy.

It had to be the baby. There was no other explanation .

His grip was loose enough that I could probably turn without disturbing him. So many times I’d been tempted to do just that. Very tempted. I wanted to know what he looked like sleeping, without the smirk or his mouth open and ready to make his usual wisecrack.

Would the dimples be showing?

Would his lips look as soft as they always did?

Would the sharp lines of his jaw have relaxed with each inhale?

In the end I decided no good would come from turning around to find out, and it was much safer to stay where I was and focus my attention on watching the world through the giant windows.

If he looked as good as I suspected he did, there would be nothing to stop me doing something stupid, like kissing him.

Instead, I allowed my breathing to sync with his, and relaxed into his chest. I was on the verge of falling back to sleep when a low moan brought me to full consciousness again.

“Wow, this is better than I ever dreamed it would be.”

His gruff, sleep-filled voice ghosted past my ear, turning my thermostat up another degree.

“You dreamed about falling asleep in a strange bed?” I replied.

“Shhh. Stop ruining my morning fantasies, you know what I mean.”

His nose brushed across my shoulder, and I braced myself for the view that would greet me as I turned in his arms. I was expecting the perma-grin, and bright blue eyes twinkling. Not his bare chest.

His deeply golden, sculpted, very bare chest .

“Where are your clothes?”

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” was all he provided as an answer.

“Tanner! Are you naked?” Please don’t be naked. I couldn’t handle naked.

“You wish.”

“ Tanner .”

He flung back the covers. “Calm down, I’m not naked. I have my pajama pants on. I got too hot in the night and took my T-shirt off. Thanks for noticing by the way.”

“Noticing what?”

“That I’d taken my shirt off,” he replied, replacing the comforter and tucking it between us, before plumping up his pillow to rest his head.

There was barely a foot between us. I’d only have to breathe deeply for our bodies to be touching.

“I was asleep.”

The right corner of his mouth pulled up a fraction, and a twinkle appeared in his eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

“How’d you know?”

“Just do.” Reaching out, his fingers pushed gently through my hair. “Seriously, how d’you wake up looking like this?”

I didn’t know how to reply, I was trying too hard to stop my cheeks from flushing. I was trying even harder to stop the thoughts creeping back into my head as I stared at his naked skin. I was still staring when he dropped his hand and scooched away.

Before I could stop it, a pang of disappointment speared me right in the chest. “Are you leaving?”

“No way.” He shook his head. “But unless you want to experience exactly how happy I am to see you this morning, then I suggest we keep a little space between us. Or you let me go and get into a very cold shower.”

My eyes flared at the meaning behind his words. I might not have such an obvious outward sign of how I was feeling right now, but Tanner had hit it right on the head. Maybe cold showers were the answer from now on.

Baby would have to deal.

I ignored the tiny bead of sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades. “Okay, sure. Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for. But please don’t bite your lip like that, it doesn’t help,” he added, freeing it from my teeth with the pad of his thumb.

He held my gaze. There was no way the air had suddenly thinned, even if it did feel like I was struggling for oxygen.

He let go of my lip and tucked his hands underneath his pillow, as though releasing them would be too much temptation for him.

On my side of the bed, my fists balled under the comforter for the exact same reason, but I apologized again anyway.

“I’m a guy, Mills. It’s kind of in our DNA to wake up horny.”

DNA. Of course, it was DNA and nothing else.

And this baby’s DNA was half of Tanner. That’s why I was waking up feeling like this. Tanner Simpson.

A frown creased his brow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re annoyed at me. You can’t be annoyed already, we’ve only been awake five minutes.”

I tried my best to school my features back to neutral. “I’m not annoyed, it’s just—” I stopped, this was so dumb.

“Just what?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. I don’t know. This baby is making me feel things. And I wish it wouldn’t.”

“What things?”

“You know… things .”

His blue eyes narrowed a fraction, scouring my face. The way I couldn’t look at him made it perfectly obvious what things I was thinking about, especially when a sly smile slowly crept upward.

“Things like the feel of my dick sliding inside you?”

The visual popped into my brain before I could stop it, and my entire body throbbed hard. “Tanner. God ? — ”

“Am I right?”

“Maybe.”

“And the baby is making you feel this?”

“The baby is making me hot. And the baby is reminding me how it came about in the first place,” I clarified, in the worst attempt ever to save face. “That’s all. DNA, like you said.”

I was sorely tempted to hit Tanner with my pillow from the laugh he barked out. He didn’t care that I practically snarled the last part of my sentence, if anything he enjoyed it.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I wake up every single morning thinking of you , and only you? My body is reacting to that. Right now is no different,” he said, then paused.

“No, I lie. Right now is way more intense because I’ve woken up next to you after dreaming about it for more than a year.

I’m fully prepared to get in a cold shower, I just wanted to experience this for a little longer.

Unless you wanna join me.” He grinned wide, and I could tell he wasn’t joking even a little bit.

If I said yes, I’d be in that shower before I could blink.

My brain was whirring a thousand times a minute. An opportunity was presenting itself that I was definitely going to blame on the baby, because right now I couldn’t think straight for all the images of naked Tanner flashing in my brain.

“Do you think it’ll complicate things?”

“Do you think us having sex will complicate things?”

I nodded.

“Not for me,” he replied without hesitation.

“What if we made this a one-time thing? No strings. Just morning sex because you happened to be here.”

“No can do, sorry, babe. This is our string.” Pulling down the comforter, he ran his hand over my belly.

His fingers stayed purposely low, brushing over that sensitive spot on my hip bones until it trembled.

“And I for one couldn’t be happier that I’m attached to you.

But…while I wait for you to admit you’re in love with me, I can do my very best to make you feel good. If that’s what you want.”

I let out a groan. It could have been from finally having his hands on me, or it could have been from his persistence in making me admit feelings I didn’t have. Didn’t think I had.

“However, there’s one condition.”

“What?”

“If you want to have sex with me, you need to ask for it.”

“Tanner— ”

“Come on, Mills.” His voice dropped an octave, gravelly and raw, like he’d already spent the night doing exactly what I wanted him to do to me right now. “You wanna sit on my face, ride me as I eat you out? Drip down my throat while you’re begging for more? I want to hear you ask for it.”

This guy was good, I’d give him that.

I was putty in his hands and he knew it. His eyes were roaming over my body—the kick of my pulse, the shallow breaths, my dilated pupils. He knew, and if he continued talking to me like that, I’d come without him having touched me.

“Mil lie …”