Page 28

Parker

I missed this.

I missed the feel of her under my hands, and the desperate urge for more had me kissing her deeper, angling my head so I could lick into her mouth and swallow her sounds, breathe them into my lungs where they’d hit my bloodstream like a shot.

A furious heartbeat thundered in my ears because I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe she’d come to me.

The sound of his voice saying her name lit a violent, territorial explosion deep under my ribs.

He didn’t deserve to say her name.

Didn’t deserve a second of her time. And not because of anything between Anya and me, but because he had his chance, and he fucking blew it. You were given the trust of a woman like her once, and if you lost it, there was no going back.

It should have torn into the lust ripping through my system, but I was too far gone. I wanted her too badly. Wanted her more than I should have.

Anya’s body writhed against me as I backed us up against her bed, one hand fisted in her hair and the other gripping her tight around her waist. The pathetic excuse for shorts hardly covered her ass, and I moved my hand from her waist underneath the threadbare cotton. Her skin was warm and soft and strong, and it had been forever since I’d tasted her.

That was what it felt like. Weeks and months and years. Long enough that a reckless craving anchored itself deep inside me.

Maybe I didn’t deserve a second of her time either because it was so hard for me to untangle what I wanted, and what I needed, and what made sense for both of us, but all of that was knocked aside with a brutal swipe of my hand.

It wasn’t about taking something that she was offering. It was giving it right fucking back to her.

Right now, one thing was true: Anya sought me out for something. For comfort, to feel needed and wanted when everything in her head was upside down.

In this bed, with just the two of us and no one watching, I could give her everything.

Give her the thing he couldn’t.

Even a single moment of one single day when this woman felt like less was too much, a fucking tragedy that I couldn’t stomach. Bracing a hand on the bed, I pushed Anya backward until she was spread underneath me on the mattress. My hands shook as I curled them around her thighs, my fingers denting the skin there. She inhaled shakily, arching her back slightly into my touch.

“You know what I want?” I asked, sliding my hands around until her backside was firmly in my grasp. I yanked her forward, her open legs around my midsection. Anya gasped, her hands clutching my forearm, nails digging into my skin. “I wish I could answer that phone again and let him hear.”

Her pupils were blown wide, her cheeks flushed, and her lips shiny from where she’d just licked them.

“Imagine that,” I whispered, prying her thighs open and prowling closer until my mouth hovered over hers. “Imagine if he could hear what I’m about to do to you. Do you like the idea of that, baby?”

Anya’s breaths were choppy and short, and there was only the slightest hesitation before she nodded. “Show me what you’d do if he could,” she said, a daring tilt to her chin that made me fucking crazy.

I growled, surging forward to steal a fierce kiss, licking into her mouth, my tongue over hers in a rough drag that had her whimpering.

My hand tugged at the waistband of her shorts, and she scrambled to help.

“Leo?” she asked, panting against my mouth.

“Asleep in my room.”

Anya tossed her head back, and I licked at the line of her neck. “Oh, please.”

With rough hands, I leaned back to tug her shorts off, ripping them off her legs with my blood pumping furiously in my ears. All she was wearing underneath was ivory lace, cut high on her legs, and that came off next.

“You know what I wish?” I whispered.

Her eyes met mine, her chest rising and falling furiously, and I slid my hand up her stomach while I placed sucking kisses along the inside of her thigh. “What?” she panted. I bit down on the skin right above her knee, and she gasped.

“I wish that first night I met you, I told you that you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

Her eyes snapped to mine.

Another kiss. Another inch closer. “I wish I’d pulled you into the dark and kissed you.”

She let out a whimpering sound, her gaze unwavering as I pushed the hand on her stomach up underneath her shirt, rolling her nipple between my fingers. When I pinched, her eyelids fluttered shut.

“Uh-uh. Eyes on me, Anya.” I wedged my shoulder between her legs. “Pretend with me, wife. Pretend I had you that night, and he never got a single fucking moment of your time.”

I licked straight up her center, a groan tearing from my chest at the heady taste of her.

Anya tossed her head back and let out a low, disbelieving moan, her back arching as I did it again, kissing her just like I had her mouth, with long licks of my tongue and sucking kisses.

Her fingers twined through my hair and fisted hard, her hips working restlessly against my face.

I pulled my mouth away, wiping my wet mouth against her thigh. “Pretend I had you first. That it was so good that you forgot his name the next day. That you were never, ever his.”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Parker, please.”

“One like this?” I asked.

She nodded frantically, and I dipped my head back down, growling at the soft, wet feel of her against my mouth.

I wanted this forever.

The thought was quick, there and gone in the next moment. It didn’t settle long enough to leave behind an impression. It fluttered in and out as her thighs trembled. I wrapped a hand around each one to hold her in place.

But it wasn’t long before it slipped back in. Because I did. I wanted to worship her as long as she’d let me. Kneel every fucking day if it meant making her feel this way.

I slid two fingers into her and curved up, placing tongue-heavy kisses just above, where it made her stomach tremble, and her thighs lock tight around my head.

She chanted my name, her hips undulating as she chased her pleasure, and the moment she broke, she let out a drawn-out moan that I’d hear in my dreams for the rest of my life.

I surged up to take her mouth in a fierce, savage kiss, and even though she was still coming down from her first orgasm, her hands shoved at the waistband of my pants, groaning at the taste of her on my mouth.

Greedy hands pushed up underneath her shirt— my fucking shirt—filling my hand with the warm, soft weight of her breast. Our tongues tangled around each other, and she pushed me back until I sat on my haunches on the floor in front of her, nail marks along my heaving chest that I didn’t even remember her leaving.

Before I could wonder what she was doing, Anya sat up and started to peel the shirt off, but I stood and stilled her hands. “Leave it on,” I demanded. “I want to see my name on you while I fuck him right out of your head.”

Her eyes flared.

“Who?” she asked with an innocent tilt of her head.

With a possessive flare of heat in my gut, I bent her backward from the force of my kiss. It was so easy to get lost in her, so easy to drown in this heat.

“What do you want?” I asked her, our lips brushing.

She only took a moment to answer, and I ghosted my fingertips over her collarbone, her chest flushed pink.

“Don’t treat me like I’m made of glass,” she said, a fearless gleam in her eye. “I won’t break.”

“I know you won’t.” A dozen ideas screamed through my head, each better and filthier than the last. If I had a hundred nights, a thousand nights, it wouldn’t be enough.

Anya leaned in and sucked on my bottom lip. Her gaze was relentless, and I felt a ragged tear in my chest at the thought that I might not have it someday.

“But I want you to try,” she whispered.

The blast of heat in my skin should’ve leveled the entire house. “Do you?” I asked quietly.

Slowly, Anya turned around and took my hands in hers, anchoring them at her hips while she braced her knee on the mattress, displaying her back and the delicious curves of her firm backside.

My mouth watered, some snapping, snarling beast inside me begging to be unleashed.

I skated my palm underneath the shirt, pushing it up just enough that I could see the curve of her waist.

With one hand anchored at her hip, I pulled the other out from under the shirt to wind her hair around my fist, then I tugged her head back until she could see me. I curled my chest over her back and stole a fiery kiss.

“Pretend you’re mine,” I said against her lips, my voice raw and demanding.

Her eyes fluttered closed.

“Say it.” I pushed my hips lazily, my hardness sliding between her legs, back and forth, back and forth, teasing her until she trembled.

“I’m yours,” she moaned. “I’m yours.”

My eyes pinched shut, a cracking sensation running straight down the middle of my chest. I fisted myself in hand, and the moment I pushed inside, that first single inch of searing heat and perfect wetness, I lost my fucking mind, a sharp thrust of my hips forward until I bottomed out completely.

We groaned in unison, and I held there for a perfect moment until she clenched around me.

“Parker,” she sobbed. “I … I?—”

Whatever she was going to say got lost in a whimpering moan when I pushed inside her again, harder this time. Anya turned her head and bit down on her arm to mute the sounds escaping her flushed pink lips.

I didn’t ask what she was going to say. I couldn’t.

On the nightstand, her phone rang, and we both ignored it. If it was him, he’d fucking wait the rest of his life before getting what he wanted out of her.

“Don’t stop,” she pleaded. “Please.”

Instead, I gave her what she asked for. With ruthless hammering of my hips, the slap of skin against skin, I lost myself in her.

Fully.

Completely.

My thighs screamed from the effort it took to hold my release at bay, my spine shook as heat built and built and built, seeking an outlet.

Wait , I told myself. Just wait.

Give her this. Give her everything.

Everything. Anything. Whatever I had to give, it was hers.

It was fast and messy and hard, raw in a way that I wasn’t used to, because I felt so much, too much, and it built and built and built under my skin. I wanted it to last forever. Between gritted teeth, I said things I shouldn’t have, that she was perfect and sexy and I’d never seen anything like her before. That she was made to take me.

I didn’t think she heard me, though, because the noises we made—animal and frantic—were so fucking loud, it was a miracle if the baby slept through it.

She tightened around me, and I damn near blacked out from the force of it, watching the way she crumpled as her orgasm hit her like a lightning bolt, her arms unable to hold up her weight as her upper body melted into the bed.

Anya came on a scream, something she tried to muffle in the mattress, and as soon as she did, I clamped my hands so tight around her hips that I was worried I’d leave bruises.

Almost.

Almost.

Another thrust and my spine almost bowed under a sharp spike of pleasure.

One more, and I gritted my teeth at the ruthless build of it.

Almost there.

The shock wave reverberated through my entire being, nothing left untouched, white light behind my eyes while I milked the best release of my entire life, my head tipped back as I struggled to breathe. With tingling hands and a heaving chest, I groaned her name.

We collapsed onto the bed, her sweaty back against my chest, the shirt still bunched up above her waist. Her fingers trailed along my forearm, and I pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

Pretend you’re mine, I thought again. Pretend I know how to do this. Like I can be what you need.

Her phone rang again, and Anya groaned. “No,” she said.

I pressed my forehead against the back of her neck and exhaled a harsh puff of air.

“If it’s Bridges again, I’m going to lose my shit,” I muttered against her skin.

Anya extricated herself from my arms and tugged the shirt back down into place. I rolled onto my back and ran a hand over my face, the thundering of my heart not easing in the slightest even though my body had thoroughly come down from the unexpected sex. My muscles were lax, all the tension bled clean from my frame.

I would’ve fallen asleep right there if it wasn’t for that incessant ringing.

While she reached for the phone, I watched her face as she saw the screen and sat up when I saw the concerned furrow in her brow.

“It was my dad. He’d never call this late.”

Anya scooted forward to the edge of the mattress, and while she waited for him to answer, I reached down and grabbed my boxers, tugging them up over my legs, then lifting off the bed long enough to pull them all the way on.

Her dad didn’t pick up, and Anya chewed on her bottom lip as she stared at her phone.

“You think something’s wrong?” I asked.

She glanced at me over her shoulder, then nodded. “My dad usually goes to bed at like eight thirty because he gets up so early.”

Anya turned back to her phone and tapped out a text. Before she could do anything else, her screen lit up again, her sister’s name appearing on the screen. Anya picked up immediately.

“Violet, is everything okay?”

Violet’s voice was thick with tears. “Mom broke her leg; it was bleeding, and we could see the bone, and … and Dad had to go with her in the ambulance. Willa is freaking out, but I don’t know where Dad’s keys are, so I can’t drive her to the hospital and?—”

Anya stood, immediately reaching for her shorts. “Hey, deep breaths, okay? You shouldn’t be going to the hospital unless Dad told you to. What happened?”

My chest was tight, an uncomfortable feeling spreading through my limbs while I watched her set the phone down on the dresser and step into the shorts. I stood, pulling her suitcase out of her closet for her, unzipping it so that it was open on the bed.

She paused, giving me a wide-eyed look of gratitude. Her face was pale, and the tremor in her hand was visible.

“We were just messing around in the backyard. Mom and Willa were playing catch with a Frisbee, Dad was doing some yard work, and Mom wasn’t looking where she was going, and they started doing all that landscaping, you know? The big rocks and the retaining wall.”

“Yeah, sort of. They started that after I left.” Anya was pulling clothes from the closet and shoving them in her suitcase. I tugged my pants on and got out of the way, leaning against the doorframe while she frantically packed. “So she was running?”

“Yeah, I … I didn’t really see it, but she tripped over one of the big rocks and there was a pallet right behind it, and there was blood, and Dad yelled at me to call 911, and …”

The sound of crying filled the speaker, and I watched Anya with a pit in my stomach. She wasn’t even paying attention to what she was doing in her haste to get packed, shoving clothes in a messy heap. Her phone screen lit up again, and Anya darted over, eyes widening.

Anya stopped and set a hand on her stomach. “Violet, listen to me, I’m leaving Portland, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just watch a movie with Willa; she’ll be okay. Dad is calling me, so I have to go, but I’ll call you as soon as I get on the road.”

“Okay,” her sister replied, voice small and worried.

I ducked out of the room when she picked up her dad’s call to give her some privacy. The door wasn’t completely shut behind me, so I heard his voice before I left the room.

His voice was thick with tears too.

Leaning against the wall, I couldn’t help but listen.

It was a displaced fracture on the tibia, and she’d likely be in surgery the following morning.

The father-daughter dynamic was clear—he felt safe enough with his oldest daughter to let his worry show, and Anya kept herself steady and calm, repeating what she’d told Violet.

She was on her way.

She’d be there soon.

Everything would be okay.

I swiped a hand over my face and let my head rest against the wall, fighting a mighty surge of guilt that I was literally fucking his daughter when he called. The daughter I promised to take care of. Promised that she was safe with me. Promised that I wouldn’t hurt her.

And it seemed all I had done was pull her straight into my own fucked-up coping mechanisms, the ones I told myself I’d left behind.

Anya’s phone call didn’t last long, and I pinched my eyes shut when I heard her tell Aiden she loved him. Her sigh was loud, and she opened the door, popping her head to see if I was still there.

“I’m so sorry I can’t be at training camp tomorrow,” she said breathlessly.

I followed her back into the room, staying by the door so that I was out of her way. “It’s okay. You should be with your family.”

Her movements were frantic, stripping off her pajama shorts and trading them for some joggers. She moved into the bathroom, coming back out almost immediately with a few cosmetic bags. We hadn’t even been home long enough for her to unpack.

“Do you want me to charter you a flight?” I asked. “It’ll get you home quicker.”

She shook her head. “No, I should have my own car. But … thank you. Paige is going to sit with the girls, so I have some time. My uncles are going to the hospital to sit with my dad.”

I nodded. “Good. That’s … good.”

When the last piece of clothing was in her suitcase, Anya stopped, her eyes pinched shut. “We … we should have a plan. I haven’t told my parents about Leo yet, and … God, I don’t even know what her recovery is going to look like. He’ll need help at the gym and with the girls. Are we going to have to talk every day to keep this up? Who’s going to watch Leo? What if they wonder why you’re not visiting and … the-the press, and what if this comes up with custody lawyers?—”

Her voice cut off, her breathing ragged, face flushed.

My own breathing was shallow because I felt we were at a tipping point, the edge of a cliff just past this conversation.

Sinking my weight against the doorframe, I let my gaze linger on Anya’s face, waiting for her to look over at me. But she didn’t. She stared down at her suitcase.

It was too much.

We’d gone too far, and it was past time that we both admitted it.

“Anya.” She still didn’t look up, her hands fisting in the shirt she’d just put in the suitcase. “Look at me, golden girl.”

Her hands were shaking, and I pushed off the doorframe, approaching her carefully. I laid a hand on her arm, and she released the shirt, finally giving me her full attention.

“We can’t keep lying to everyone, Anya,” I whispered, like if I said the words any louder, someone might hear. “We can’t .”

There was no numbing this. No pretending. No hiding and no lying. No masks.

It took her a moment to answer, and her lips parted on a small, shaky inhale before she did.

“I know.”