Page 53

CHAPTER 52

EMERY

two months later

I thought spending a week at the beach with a toddler would be stressful—worth it for the post-season getaway and uninterrupted family time, of course, but I was prepared for nonstop vigilance.

However, it turns out that sand is endlessly fascinating to Inessa, and with a bucket and a shovel, she’s content to play in one spot for hours.

All I have to do is remind her to put her hat back on, and keep apply sunscreen.

By day three, she’s remembering that herself, clever monkey.

“Emmy, my back,” she says, running over to where I’m reading on a lounger under the cover of a cabana.

We’re staying at a private villa just on the other side of the dunes, and we’re the only family who has used this beach since we arrived. It’s not completely private, but it feels like our own little oasis from the world.

I pick up the sunscreen tube and carefully cover every inch of her.

“Drink some water, too,” I say.

She makes big eyes at me as she sucks on the bright pink straw the waiters put in her cup.

Alexei lifts the straw fedora that was covering his face and gives me a lazy smile. “I need some sunscreen, too.”

He’s totally angling for me to rub him all over.

I pass the tube to Inessa instead. “Go give this to your daddy.”

She squeals and runs at him, throwing it hard at his chest.

He catches it easily and gives me a deeply amused look that I feel all the way to my toes, all hot and secret and fun. “Thanks, little one.” He squeezes some of the sunscreen into his hands, then gives her the bottle. “You can give it back to Emery now. She’ll need to do my back shortly.”

Proud of her new job, she hustles it back to me. “This is Emmy’s.”

Then she tips her head to the side, thinking. She looks back to Alexei, then to me again.

“Papa. Emmy.” She cackles like she’s told a funny joke, but we aren’t in on the punch line. Then she points at Alexei. “Daddy.” She giggles and smashes her hand to mouth. Hilarious. She points at me. “Mommy.”

My heart stops.

Alexei is looking at me. I hold very still and don’t react.

But he sees me, he always sees me, so he scoops her up and strides down to the water as she shrieks in protest.

“Come for a swim,” he calls me to over his shoulder.

I can’t.

I’m crying.

They’re happy tears, but I’m still crying. And my hands are covered in sunscreen, so if I wipe my eyes, they’ll burn.

I blindly grab a towel to wipe my face, then I jog after them into the surf.

They’re floating together in water that is mid-chest height on me. As soon as I get close, Alexei shifts Inessa to one arm, and uses the other to pull me in close.

“We love you,” he says.

I breathe.

We float.

Inessa holds on to her dad’s neck, super tight.

“I don’t want to replace anyone,” I finally whisper.

He smiles. “I know.”

“I love her so much.”

Inessa turns her face and smiles at me, dimples popping as she slaps her hand on the water.

I take her from him, lifting her out of the water, then splashing her down. Up and down. Up and down.

He wraps himself around me from behind.

“It’s okay for you to be Mommy,” he murmurs. “It won’t change the fact that Tatyana is her Mama. You aren’t a…usurper? Is that the worry?”

I nod and sniffle and then smile at Inessa as we float in the waves.

His lips brush my neck, whispering against the sensitive spot behind my ear. “You’ll be Mommy to her brothers and sisters, after all.”

I turn hot inside, instantly.

“Stop,” I whisper, not meaning it at all.

“No? You don’t want to hear how I think about your belly swelling with our next child? I love being a father, Emery. You want to make me a daddy again?”

My tongue is tied and my heart is beating a mile a minute, but I’m saved from having to answer that immediately by Sergei coming down the path to the beach.

Alexei carries Inessa out of the ocean. As soon as they’re on the sand, she wants to show her grandfather the hole she was digging. I stay floating in the water, watching them. After a few minutes, Sergei leads Inessa up the path, and Alexei strides back into the water.

I hold my breath, not quite believing this is my life—and my love.

“Deda is going to try to get her down for a nap, but we should head up there soon,” he says when he joins me.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders as he lifts my legs around his waist. “And then a nap for us, too?”

“Absolutely.” He takes my mouth in a slow, deep kiss that makes my toes curl and my thighs clench. Just us and the sea and the hot Caribbean sun.

His fingers slide under my bikini top, cupping my tit, his thumb finding my nipple with practiced familiarity.

We managed to squeeze a lot of sex into our long-distance relationship during the playoffs. And now that we’re all in New York for the summer, I get him every morning. While the rest of the house sleeps, he wakes me up with his hard-on and his questing fingers and his hungry, hungry mouth.

Before I head out the door for a long day of chef training.

I’m not going to lie, I’m looking forward to getting back to a slower pace of life in the fall when we move back to Hamilton.

This week, though, we’re on vacation, which means we aren’t constrained to only morning sex. We can have afternoon and evening sex, too. We can, and we are. Often.

And the more we connect, the more Alexei wants to touch me.

But there’s something extra about this, there’s an intensity vibrating through his body that feels new.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I get a whole week with my girls, I’m perfect.” He exhales against my neck before nipping me, gently. “I want to be inside you.”

“Not in the ocean.”

He pulls at my bikini straps. “Then get out. And I’ll follow you.”

I float away from him, topless now. He watches, his gaze hooded and hot, as I walk backwards out of the ocean, my belly and breasts jiggling for his eyes only. Then he follows, water sluicing off him, slicking the dark curls in the centre of his chest and on his legs.

He looks hungry and powerful, and I shiver as I turn and race for our towels.

“Can you be quiet here?” I jump when I hear him right behind me, a second before his arms scoop around my waist and he pulls me onto the lounge chair.

He pushes his swim shorts down, freeing his cock. Big, hard, and ready, it slaps against his wet belly.

I straddle him and he pulls my bikini bottoms aside, his gaze locked on my pussy.

“Pretty little cunt,” he rumbles under his breath. “Needs to be filled up.”

My belly clenches.

His thumb brushes reverently over my lips, then around my clit.

The clench eases into a warm, steady need.

I take him in hand, stroking him firmly. Bringing pre-come to his tip and slicking it around with my thumb. His cock throbs against my fingers, flexing and stretching. I love watching his foreskin slide down, revealing the dark pink crown fully.

And I love making that tip disappear inside me even more.

I lift up, then slide down.

Both of us gasping at the stretch, the way he changes the shape of me on the inside and takes up space. So much space.

“Lean forward,” he rasps. “Feed me your tits.”

I brace myself on his shoulders.

He squeezes my ass as he sucks on one breast, then the other, grinning up at me in between tastes. The pull of his mouth makes need coil tight in my belly, makes my body clench down on his shaft.

“You’re going to give me little blonde babies, Emery. So many babies.”

“Shhhhh.” I brush my nipples across his mouth again, trying not to laugh and scream and say yes yes yes.

He takes my breasts in his hands, but keeps talking. “Need you to know how much I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“How many babies?”

Now I give in and laugh. “I don’t know. At least one more.”

“A little sister for Inessa, hmm? Like that?”

“Yeah.” I lick my lips as I sway on top of him, growing unsteady. “I’ll give you little boys, too.”

“Baseball players.”

“Goalies.”

“Same thing. Baseball in the summer, hockey in the winter. Triple threats.”

“That’s only two things.”

“They’re also lady killers.”

I laugh and laugh and can’t stop. I fall forward, flattening out on top of him. “You’re terrible.”

“You love me.” He takes over and starts moving inside me.

“So much,” I whisper before he finds my mouth with his.

* * *

When we get back to the villa and slip in to the primary bedroom through the patio, so we can shower off the sea—and the sex—before checking on the rest of the family, we both look at my birth control pills, sitting on the counter.

Alexei picks them up, his throat bobbing. “I want to throw these out.”

I snatch them from his fingers and set them back in their spot for me to take one in the morning. “If you do that now, we might have a newborn during playoffs next year.”

“I like your confidence that we are going to have another long run in the playoffs.” He strokes my face. “I will hire you all the help.”

“You will hire?”

“We will hire. I like keeping nannies busy.”

I tip my head back and laugh.

He kisses my throat. “I didn’t mean with sex.”

I cling to his shoulders. “I was never your nanny.”

“Disagree. You were my hottest nanny ever.”

“EBUB only.”

“EBUBs get full nanny credit if they get called on. Jerseys with their names on it and everything.”

“Oh, that’s…” I can’t argue with that logic. “Okay, fair. I was your hottest nanny.”

“But now you are my woman.”

I laugh and nod. “I am.”

“Marry me.” He mumbles it against my skin.

“Is that a question?”

“I want you to take my name.”

“Also not a question.”

He leans over and reaches for my pills again, and I think he’s going to literally toss them in front of me, but when he rights himself, it’s only to step back and kneel down.

In his hand is a diamond ring.

Not my pills.

“Oh,” I whisper.

His dark, glossy hair slides forward over his brow. I reach out to brush it to the side, because I can. Because this impossibly handsome man is mine to touch.

“I have a question I’ve wanted to ask you for two and a half years,” he says.

Should I tell him now that I was prepared to say yes that very first night in Calgary? That he swept me off my feet from that very first smile?

No, I’ll wait.

“Emery Granger, will you marry me? Will you take my name, and have my babies, and make me happy forever?”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes and yes and yes and yes, always and forever.”