Marek

  I'm going to hurl. Vomit my guts up right here on her bed. My hand slides out of my pocket, the condom seeming like the worst idea I've ever had.

  "I don't understand what that means." My hand curls into a fist and I want to slam it into a wall. "You told my mom you went into labor when you were in class."

  "No, I didn't say I went into labor. She asked how the delivery was and I said it was fine. But I was in class when I started bleeding, so that started everything..."

  "I don't understand. What's a placental abruption? Why does it happen?"

  "No clue why it happens," she says as she picks at the hem of her frayed shorts. "But it's where the placenta detaches from the uterine lining. This disrupts the flow of oxygen to the baby. It's very dangerous. Luckily, an ambulance got me to the nearby hospital and they were able to get Lilly out in time. She's perfectly fine, if you're worried about that. She was close enough to the due date that her lungs were developed well enough."

  I shake my head hard, opening my fist and closing it again. "I know Lilly's fine. I just...I can't believe you didn't tell me that. I mean, fuck...you went through all that by yourself?"

  Another shrug as she lifts her gaze to me. "Why would I tell you? It has nothing to do with you."

  That shouldn't hurt, but it does. She's right. It's none of my business, but damn it, it should have been my business.

  And fuck.

  Just fuck.

  She had a hysterectomy. She can't have any more children. Lilly is it for her unless she adopts, and she can't ever get pregnant again by me.

  I shake my head hard and push up off the bed so fast Gracen lets out a little gasp. Why in the fuck I'm even thinking about getting her pregnant is beyond me, but I need to shut that shit down fast.

  Taking a breath, I wipe my hand over my face. Gracen looks at me guardedly.

  I have no clue what to fucking say. I feel wretched that Gracen went through that, and that she did so alone. For perhaps the first time, I feel true guilt for breaking up with her and for the way in which I did it. For telling her that I wanted my freedom and didn't want the responsibility. I created a situation where Gracen had to face that pregnancy alone, and she and Lilly almost died from it.

  "I'm sorry," I manage to croak out. "I'm sorry you went through that alone and that you can't have any more kids."

  Gracen's expression softens and she looks at me with empathy.

  At me with empathy.

  Me.

  Fuck. I don't need that to make me feel worse than I already do.

  "Marek...it's fine," she says quietly. "I've made my peace with it and I have Lilly. I'm blessed."

  So easy for her to say that. She's had years to process it, but I just had my guts metaphorically torn out of me two minutes ago.

  "I, um...I gotta go get packed for my flight tomorrow," I say lamely as I move to the door. All thoughts of kissing that beautiful face and sinking into that gorgeous pussy are long forgotten. I turn to face her just before I step out of her room. "We good about last night, though?"

  Understanding dawns on her face as she immediately gets what I'm saying. Last night was truly a one-time-only thing. There's no way I can continue that shit with Gracen.

  Not when she provokes the most amazing--and also the worst--feelings within me. I can't ever let my heart get tied back up with her like that again, as I'm finding out that it fucking hurts when the person you care about hurts.

  Chapter 20

  Gracen

  I feel my bed dip and I come awake. It's what moms do. We're trained to awaken at the slightest disturbance when you have a child to consider. My first thought is of Lilly, but then a hard male body presses in to my backside. A strong arm comes across my stomach and pulls me in tight.

  Marek.

  His lips go to the back of my head, pressing a light kiss there before saying, "You awake?"

  "What are you doing?" I ask, answering his question and asking one of my own. My heart is hammering from his closeness and pure shock he's in my bed. After he walked out of my room four days ago, I thought the boundary lines had been drawn deeply.

  At least by Marek. He was making it clear that intimacy between us was off the table. For the four days he was gone, which included a game in New York and one in New Jersey, I've talked to him every day. Light conversations focused on updating him on how Lilly was doing. They were short and not really necessary, as he video chatted with her a few times a day whenever he could get the time, so he was able to see for himself how she was doing.

  "I thought I could walk away from this," he says from behind me. "But I can't. I don't want to."

  My head spins from his words and his nearness. My pulse pounds from need in his voice. Marek's hand inches under the band of my sleep shorts and my breath catches. But his fingers slide no lower than the scar that runs horizontally just above my pelvis where they took Lilly from me. It's thin and barely noticeable, yet Marek's fingers find it as if he's examined it a million times before.

  He strokes the skin there and murmurs, "It kills me what you went through. That you almost died. That Lilly almost died."

  I try to swallow but my throat is clogged up.

  Marek widens his hand to cover my entire lower stomach and he pulls me back into him. I feel his hardness at my backside.

  "It kills me that you can't have another child," he rasps out, and I can tell it took effort on his part to push those words past the thick emotion hanging between us.

  My hand covers his and my fingers curl to give him a squeeze. "It's okay."

  Marek's hand slides free of mine and comes to my jaw. He grips it gently and twists my head so I'm forced to look over my shoulder at him. He raises up on an elbow and then his lips are on mine.

  He kisses me ever so gently.

  More gentle than I can ever remember in the hundreds of times we'd kissed. Whisper soft, barely touching. His breath flutters across my mouth, and for a brief moment--a weird moment--I feel cherished by Marek.

  And then he's gone.

  Pulling away from me, rolling to the opposite side of the bed. I hear a click and then the room is flooded with warm light from the bedside table. He rolls back to me and I take a moment to notice he's in a pair of dress pants and a slightly wrinkled but bright white shirt. They must have left the arena in New Jersey and headed straight for the airport to come back to Raleigh.

  I gasp with surprise when he rolls right on top of me. My legs spread without any thought to let him settle in between them, and before I can take a breath, his mouth is back on me. Not as gentle, definitely deeper.

  But more brief.

  His lips are gone again and then he's sliding down my body. He pushes my tank top up, folds the elastic down on my shorts, and lowers his head to look at my scar. My face heats up from the way he studies it critically, his mouth set into a grim slash across his stubbled face.

  Marek lifts his eyes to mine and I think my heart stops when he says, "I'm sorry for leaving you. The way I left you. For making you think you couldn't trust me with being there for the pregnancy. I'm just...sorry for all of it."

  A surge of shock and adrenaline flows through my veins over his admission, something I never thought I'd hear.

  Something I never thought I deserved to hear because my sins were so great that Marek's didn't really matter.

  "Mar--"

  His name on my lips is cut off as his mouth comes to my scar and he kisses it. Brushes over the thin pink line, only to trace it with the tip of his tongue.

  My breath gushes out of me so forcefully I struggle to take air back in through my flattened lungs.

  Marek's eyes come back to mine. "Do you want me to stop?"

  I shake my head frantically.

  "Good, because I don't think I can."

  "But what does this mean?" I ask him in bewilderment.

  His return stare is intense, as if this may be the most important conversation of our lives. "It means I want to be with you."
/>
  "In bed," I say for clarification.

  "Yes, in bed," he says gruffly. "And out of it as we raise Lilly."

  I raise up to my elbows so I can look at him better. "And in between bed and parenting?"

  "I don't know," he answers after a brief hesitation. "I mean...what else is there?"

  Well, at least he's honest.

  I scramble out from underneath him to prop myself up against the headboard. I pull my feet in, knees to my chest, and wrap my arms around my shins. Marek sits up, leaning toward me with a palm to the mattress.

  "That clearly wasn't the answer you wanted," he says guardedly.

  "You left me because you wanted freedom," I remind him. "You didn't want to answer to a girlfriend. I'm not stupid, I know that meant you wanted to be free to be with other women."

  "Gracen," he says in a chastising tone, but I hold my hand up to silence him.

  "I'm not built to be just one of your women, Marek. I'm sorry, but that's not good enough for me."

  I expect a few things. Anger, mostly that I'm cutting him off. Possibly some chagrin.

  Instead, the nut job laughs at me. A deep belly laugh as his eyes sparkle with amusement.

  "How is this possibly funny?" I seethe at him.

  "Because I'm an idiot and don't express myself very well, apparently." I jolt at his proclamation and yes, there's the chagrin I'd been expecting, but for different reasons.

  Marek crawls onto the bed. His hands go to my ankles, and with a quick pull and a yelp from me, he has me lying on the mattress again.

  Nudging his way between my legs, which shamelessly part just as easily as they did a few minutes ago, he presses his elbows into the mattress near my ribs. This brings his face right over mine, his eyes locking onto mine. "Gracen...I haven't been with another woman since that day I walked into the church to stop your wedding."

  "You haven't?" I ask, my eyebrows furrowing inward.

  He shakes his head. "I can't lie and tell you it's because I was obsessing about you the entire time. Mostly, I was just so thrown by having a daughter that I was trying to get my feet underneath me. I couldn't really think about anything else. But ever since I kissed you that night I was drunk, well...you're definitely the only woman I've been thinking about."

  "For now," I can't help but say, my voice small and meek. I hate that he makes me doubt everything.

  "Yeah, for now," he confirms, and I hate his honesty even more. "But, Gracen...now is all we have. And right now, you and I have reconnected in a way that I don't think either of us planned on. You and I share something that I've never shared with another woman, and for some reason, that's changed something inside of me. I just...I want you. I want only you. I don't know what this means past that, but I'm guessing we'll figure it out."

  It's not a declaration of love, but then again, I never expected that. While my feelings for Marek always remained, I know my actions--not telling him about his daughter--destroyed anything he may have felt for me.

  Which is why this is confusing right now, but I guess you don't have to love someone to be intimate with them. While I was in love with Marek when I decided to give him my virginity, I've been with men after him I didn't love. I cared for them, and they weren't meaningless, but I've never loved anyone but Marek.

  "Talk to me, Gracen," Marek says as he holds his weight off me.

  I nibble on my lower lip a moment to collect my thoughts. "So we'll have a sexual relationship, be monogamous, and raise Lilly together?"

  I don't know whether to like the fact or not that he actually winces over the way I put it, but that's exactly what it is.

  He nods. "It's a start."

  And yes, I suppose this could be the start of something new. We'll never have what we did before, because there are too many hurts that run way too deep. But what we have now is something I think I can handle.

  I love him, after all.

  Bringing my hands up to curl around his neck, I tell him, "I think I can get on board with that."

  Marek's smile causes my heart to flat-out skip a few beats. You'd think he'd won the lottery or something, but I'm the one who feels like a winner as he settles his weight onto my body and kisses me deeply.

  I moan as he possesses my mouth and his cock lengthens and hardens as it presses between my legs. Marek's head pops up, and his eyes are fevered as he looks at me for just a moment. My hips swivel, trying to create friction, and that seems to jar him. He attacks my mouth again, but rolls us both to our sides. His hands tear at my clothes while I go first for his belt and zipper. I have him in my hand just as his mouth closes over a nipple he'd managed to expose by jerking my top over my head. I squeeze him hard and then start to stroke him.

  "Fuck," he mutters against my breast, and then he's cupping me between my legs. "Let's get the rest of these clothes off."

  I giggle as I push him away from me. He rolls right off the bed and starts undressing faster than I've ever seen a person do. I barely get my shorts and panties off before he's back on top of me, mouth fused to mine.

  His fingers press into me as I take his cock back in hand again, stroking it with long pulls that have him groaning from deep within his chest.

  When Marek's thumb brushes against my clit, I thrash against the sensation, and the words come tumbling out of my mouth without any thought. "I need you, Marek. Need you to fuck me right now."

  "Goddammit," Marek mutters as if he's lost total control, then he's flipping my body over.

  My stomach hits the bed, only for him to jerk me up to my knees with his hands at my waist. I feel like a rag doll being roughly used, and I love it.

  I cry out when I feel Marek's mouth on my pussy from behind me, slapping a hand over my lips just as he shoves his tongue inside of me. He groans again as if he's tasted nothing better, then he's gone for a moment, only to push the tip of his cock inside me.

  Marek is big--thick, long, beautiful--and it's always been a little scary and thrilling all at once knowing that my body would have to stretch to accommodate him.

  Knowing there'd be a little pinch of pain.

  He presses a solid inch into me, muttering curses as he does so. I wiggle my ass, rotate my hips...anything to get him to come a little bit further inside.

  "So fucking tight, Gracie," he grits out as he pushes inside another inch. "And wet. You're soaked, baby."

  God, I missed his dirty talk. I've never had anyone affect me with words the way he does.

  "You should see it," he murmurs as his hands come to my ass. His thumbs dig in, pull my cheeks apart slightly. I can imagine him staring down at us. "My cock sliding into you. You taking my cock. That pussy...my pussy...begging for me to fuck it hard, right, Gracie?"

  "Jesus, yes," I growl at him as I try to push back against the invading force. As I try to force him in deeper.

  "I love it when you think you're actually in control, Gracie," Marek teases me, sliding out the few inches he'd gained.

  I grit my teeth to keep myself from cursing him, and dig my fingers into the comforter. Marek's hands stroke the skin on my ass cheeks oh so tenderly. Soothing me.

  His cock slides in a little further this time before retreating slowly. I know he's doing this so my body adjusts without pain, but he also knows I don't mind the pain.

  Sometimes I even like it quite a lot.

  "Marek," I beg him quietly. "Please...just--"

  He slams into me, punching his hips forward so hard I have to throw a hand out to the headboard so I don't go onto my face. His cock fills me up, demanding space my body didn't think it would have to yield, and yet sighs in complete happiness to give it up to him.

  "Oh, Gracie," Marek moans as he holds still inside of me. "You feel so damn good."

  I can feel his hands trembling as they grip my hips, and I know he's going to ride me hard and fast. My blood sings with anticipation as I wait for Marek to pull his thickness out of me, knowing how good it's going to feel when he plunges back in.

>   But to my surprise, Marek leans his entire body against my back and forces me down to the mattress. I turn my head so my cheek is resting on the pillow.

  Marek's mouth touches the corner of mine and he grinds deeper into me with a soft groan.

  His mouth goes to my shoulder, which he kisses softly as he pulls his hips back only slightly. There's no pause, only a slow pushing of his cock into me. It's a slow, shallow stroke...meant to be felt in increments and savored fully.

  "Going to fuck you slow, Gracie," he murmurs before another kiss to my shoulder. "Settle in, because we're taking our time tonight."

  I let out a sigh of amazement. This is different. Marek was never one for slow and luxurious. Both of us were always racing to the end, knowing we could start all over again the quicker we finished. Marek was always able to get me off so quickly that I'd usually get in at least two orgasms before he'd release.

  Now this is very interesting.

  Different.

  It feels like a more mature type of sex. His strokes inside of me are deep but purposeful, while his lips trail lightly over my skin.

  Once again, I feel cherished.

  Marek sets the slow pace and grinds into me from behind. His breathing picks up, as does mine, because every stroke brings both of us closer to the edge. At this angle, his dick bumps deliciously against something inside of me that makes my toes curl and my pulse speed up. I can feel my orgasm tightening, in the same slow increments by which he fucks me. His movements are like stroking a tiny ember into fire until my entire body hovers right at the precipice of something momentous.

  "Marek," I murmur in frustration.

  "Let go, Gracie. Just let go and fall with me."

  His words. He does it again with words.

  My body opens up and accepts what he's been building. I feel like I burst apart from the inside, and I have to turn my face into the pillow to muffle my cry of release.

  "That's it," Marek praises me, presses into me ever so deeply. Then he goes still, his arms slipping under my stomach and wrapping around me tightly. His chin comes to my shoulder.

  Marek's hips tilt, pushing me impossibly deeper into the mattress, and his entire body trembles against me. He groans as he starts to come, holding me so tight I can barely breathe.