“She does that,” a big, brassy voice cut in. “The baby is a boy, right? So be careful. Lauren is famous for helping herself to men that aren’t hers.”
Lauren’s face began to flame even before she heard other conversations stop around them. Embarrassed, she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “Miranda,” Lauren said icily. “How’ve you been for the past two years?” She gave her old adversary the once-over. The woman was draped in diamonds, because her husband had had a good run in the NHL before he retired from the team last year.
Miranda Chancer tossed her hair and grinned. “Good,” she said with a chuckle. “Same old, same old.”
“Is that right?” Lauren said, easing little Xavier back into his mother’s arms, because her hands had begun to shake. “I would ask if you had any new hobbies. But I can tell that spreading lies is still your favorite pastime.”
In the dreadful silence which followed, Lauren turned away, her heart racing. She took three steps toward the elevator banks, but someone squeezed her elbow. Hyped up on adrenaline, she whirled toward her captor.
Mike.
“Hey,” he said. “God. That was . . . Are you all right?”
She didn’t let him finish. “I’m fine.” She jerked her arm out of his grasp and made her escape.
He followed her, but Lauren was fast. She made it into an elevator, and as the doors slid closed she saw him halt, his worried face studying her as she disappeared.
Lauren felt a hot slap of shame for sinking to Miranda Chancer’s level. She’d delivered an artless insult—even less clever than the one a thirteen-year-old had delivered only moments earlier. And, hell. At least Elsa had a shot at growing out of such uncouth behavior.
Damn it. She’d lost her cool, and right in front of the team. And Mike.
As the elevator slid higher, she wondered how much he’d heard, and whether he’d seen her fawning over that baby, too.
Life was simpler five weeks ago when he wasn’t around all the time. Please, Lord, she prayed. Let them win this next round in five? I’m trying to move on, here. But I need your help.
An hour later she’d managed to relax. This was accomplished via the overpriced single-serving bottle of cabernet she’d removed from the minibar, and the spread of magazines across her lap. The television was tuned to a singing competition of some kind. It wasn’t interesting but the laughter made her feel less alone.
She heard a rapping sound, like someone knocking on the door.
Lauren muted the TV to see if it would repeat.
It did.
With a sigh, she tiptoed into the suite’s living room and crept closer to the peephole. Since her phone was off, she had no idea if Nate was looking for her.
It wasn’t Nate. Lauren froze there and waited for Mike Beacon to give up and retreat back down the hall.
But he knocked again. “Come on, Lo. I heard the TV mute. It was one of those talent shows you used to watch. Open the door.”
Damn him. “Don’t kill my buzz,” she said through the door. “I’m over it already, if you came to apologize for . . .” Miranda? Elsa? Abandonment? He could really take his pick. “. . . for whatever.”
He chuckled. “Just let me in, okay? I just want to see you.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her fists against the urge to open the door. But he was right there on the other side, asking to come in. Was there any chance she was about to send him away?
Something went thunk against the door.
“What was that?” she asked.
“My forehead.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not at all. Just miss you.”
Somehow those were the magic words. She reached for the door knob and opened it. “Want to get drunk?”
He chuckled. “Maybe? Rough day? Want to talk about it?”
She tried on that idea in her head. I was hoping to be pregnant right now, so I shamed Chancey’s wife. Nope. That sounded too crazy to say out loud. “I’ll be fine. I missed a doctor’s appointment in New York today. No big deal. It’s just that things just didn’t work out like I planned.” Again.
“This time it’s not my fault,” he said, tossing his tie onto the coffee table. “Where’s the TV?”
She pointed at the bedroom.
He shrugged off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. Then he went to sit on the bed. She watched as he grabbed the clicker and unmuted the TV, where a man’s voice began to belt out Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
Mike made a face. “He’s not gonna win! Listen to that.”
For a second she was just frozen there on the carpet, trying to wrap her head around this moment. It might have been any night from the happiest year of her life. The TV on. Idle chatter. Mike looking pleasantly weary from one game or another.
It was like traveling backward in time.
She had to work to unstick herself and walk toward him. “Want a beer from the mini bar?”
“Am I breathing?”
Another knife to the heart. He used to say that all the time.
She fetched him a bottle of Dos Equis, opened the top and brought it to him. With her wineglass in her hand, she climbed carefully onto the other side of the bed and sat beside him. “Where’s your family?” she asked, watching the singer strut around on the stage.
“They went to bed.”
She gave him a sidelong glance, wondering what he expected to happen now. “We can’t have sex,” she blurted out.
His eyes didn’t leave the screen, but he covered her hand with his. “Why?”
“I could get pregnant right now.”
His chin whipped toward hers. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.
He gave a sexy little growl and shifted his hips. “And why is that a problem? Is that the doctor’s appointment you missed today?”
Lauren shivered slightly. She grabbed the clicker and bumped up the volume on the TV.
He let her have the distraction for a moment. But then his thumb began to slowly stroke her wrist. That jerk. He knew she’d have trouble resisting his caresses.
She pulled her hand back. “I can’t be casual about this.”
“It’s not casual at all. Not to me.”
“But if I conceive, then there’s a new person who’s smack in the middle of all our old troubles. It’s complicated. I need to think about that.”
Now he turned to look her in the eye. “So you are thinking about it, then?”
Busted. It had been hard to think of anything else, but she didn’t admit it. She just held his gaze.
Mike looked away first. “You take all the time you need. I’ll just sit here and mind my own business. Forget I’m even here.”
He took a swig of his beer, and a different singer waltzed onto the stage to a round of applause.
Lauren tried to watch the show. But his nearness was the mother of all distractions. And he took her hand again. A couple of minutes later he dragged a roughened finger up the sensitive skin at the inside of her forearm. When he reached her inner elbow, she stopped breathing. And when he lifted her palm to his lips, she bit the inside of her cheek.
The new singer was, if possible, worse than the first. She had a warbly voice and she’d chosen an old jazz standard that deserved better.
Mike let out a giant groan.
“Something the matter?” Lauren asked, her voice a little rougher than it had been a few minutes ago.
“Yeah, there is. We could be making a baby right now, and we’re watching this.”
“That’s just the postgame horniness talking,” she said with as much nonchalance as she could summon.
“Oh, it’s talking. But not so loudly that I can’t hear myself think.”
“Mike, I need time.”
He looked at his
watch, and then back at the screen. When approximately one minute had passed, he muted the show, then leaned in and kissed her neck.
“Mike,” she warned. His lips moved sensuously down her neck, dropping soft kisses. His beard tickled her collarbone and the shiver that resulted seemed to vibrate everywhere.
“You want to send me home?” He tongued her earlobe, then sucked it into his mouth.
She didn’t want to send him home—not when he was making love to the sensitive patch of skin beneath her ear. Her hands found their way onto his chest. He covered them with one of his and then his mouth covered hers, hot and determined. With a moan, she opened for him. Their tongues met and melded.
Mike: 1, self-control: 0.
“I need you,” he grunted, rolling on top of her. “We need each other.”
With his tongue in her mouth, it was hard to argue the point. Everything was heat and motion. She let herself be stoked like a campfire. Using his tongue and his very skilled hands, he built her into a raging, crackling flame. He tugged at her clothes, and she was too pliant to care as they were stripped away piece by piece, along with his.
Skin to skin, they kissed until her lips were swollen and her heart held nothing but willingness and desire. He whispered sweet words into her ear as his thick fingers slid down her body and into the juncture of her thighs. “So soft and ready for me,” he rasped against her lips.
She tugged his head closer and kissed him again. More action, please. Less talking.
“Lauren,” he said gently. He was straddling her, his cockhead teasing her clit. He was poised on his elbows above her body, dark eyes glittering. “Do you want me to find a condom?”
Did she?
She considered the question while he plundered her mouth with another knee-melting kiss. She was throbbing, her legs splayed open, her heart whirling. This, her body chanted. This. And more of this.
“Lo,” he pressed, his fingers stroking her mercilessly. “We can do this either way. But you have to tell me. Condom?”
Slowly, she shook her head.
He gave her the hottest smile she’d ever seen. Then he grabbed both her hands and pressed them against the bed. But when he pushed inside, his cocky grin slid right off his face. “Oh, fuck. Oh. You feel so fucking good.”
She couldn’t comment because she was too busy climaxing. Pleasure ripped through her body unexpectedly. She whimpered and shook.
“Lo,” he groaned, his hips driving forward. He took her mouth in another hungry kiss.
Pinned to the bed like a butterfly to a board, she let out a husky moan. This was the stuff of her fantasies. It was reckless and unexpected, and that made it even sweeter. Skin to skin, each new sensation was bright and overwhelming.
Above her, he made the soul-deep sounds of a man in love. She sensed a third presence in the room—there was Mike and Lauren, and also their union. Their closeness was back, gasping to life, shimmying between them.
It wasn’t long before she felt her joy building again. Breaking off their kiss, she jammed her face against his neck and cried out.
“Baby, yes,” he groaned. Then, with a shout, he planted himself one more time.
When his body relaxed against hers a moment later, nobody spoke. Theirs was a sweet silence, broken only by the sound of their mingled panting.
“See?” he croaked.
She did see. Even if she was still too blissed out to articulate it, she knew what he meant. What they’d just done wasn’t a spark of recklessness, but a force of nature. Like gravity. You could leap away from it, but it always pulled you back.
Their connection was still there, even if it had lain dormant a long time. Lauren had watched people search their whole lives for the One, and hers was currently on top of her. She wasn’t going to argue with him. Yet she might tease him. “You’re smug, aren’t you?”
“Only about a few things.”
“Which are . . . ?”
“I’m good at keeping a six ounce hunk of rubber out of the net. I have a smart kid. And I can make you into a needy puddle of a girl just by chewing on your neck.” She shivered without meaning to, and he chuckled. “See?” He dipped down to kiss her collarbone again, and he gave his hips one more slow pump. “Christ, Lo,” he added eventually. “That was probably good for triplets. Or twins, at least.”
Triplets? “Bite your tongue.”
He laughed, but she wasn’t ready to think about the consequences. Later, when she was alone, there would be time to panic about the future, and whether they could work things out for good.
He chuckled into her hair. “I’m all in. Literally.”
“I noticed that,” she muttered. They were still joined, and she gave him a little shove to get off her.
But he caught her hands and kissed her again. “You can’t get rid of me so easily.”
Given what they’d just done, he might turn out to be right.
“Don’t panic, honey,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”
Was it? “You panicked once,” she reminded him. “That was fun.”
He kissed her nose. “Fair enough. But I learned my lesson.”
“Let me up, okay?”
With a sexy groan, he removed himself from her body, and she padded into the bathroom for a little cleanup. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, he was still lounging in her bed. “Come here,” he demanded.
She sat on the edge of the bed, trying to wrap her head around what had happened here tonight. The results were potentially life-changing.
Mike tugged her hand until she turned to face him. “I know you’re a thinker, Lo. It’s one of the things I love about you.” He pulled her down onto his spectacular body. “But don’t think yourself into a freak-out. Tonight you made me the happiest man in Florida. So get down here and kiss me.”
“I’m not freaking out,” she insisted. She curled one hand around his scruffy jaw and kissed him to prove it. “Don’t you have to go back to your own room? Is Elsa there alone?”
He grinned. “I should get back before she wakes in the morning. But she’s in a room that adjoins Hans and Justin’s.” He dropped a row of kisses along her jawline. “We have a few more hours. I can set my alarm for early in the morning . . .”
She wrapped her arms around him and accepted his kisses. There was no way to worry about the future when she had the love of her life in her arms, his hard body pressed against her own. It was late now, but neither of them was sleepy. They kissed until their lips were swollen, and his erection was a hot brand against her belly again.
He dipped his head and caught her breast in his mouth. As he sucked, she felt her body calling to him again. He released her breast with a wet pop and went to work on the other side. “If you get pregnant,” he said between kisses, “these will get all firm and heavy.” Then he ran a hand down her belly. “You’ll get round right here. I’ll have to lay you on your side and do you from behind.”
She moaned and squeezed her legs together against the slickness she felt there.
“Yeah. Like this,” he said.
She let herself be arranged on her hip, both legs bent. Mike lifted her top knee and maneuvered his hips into place. He filled her again, and they both moaned.
“Can’t wait to give you babies,” he said as he began to move. “One might not be enough.” His arm came around her waist, and he took hold of her breast in his hand, rolling the nipple until she whimpered. “You like that?”
She did.
He nudged her again, rolling her farther until she was propped onto elbows and knees. “We’ll have to practice a lot,” he rasped into her ear. “Stay agile . . .” As he picked up the pace, she pressed her forehead into the pillow and just took it. Every stroke made her feel happier than the last.
In the two years since they were a couple she’d had a couple of flings just to prove s
he could. Every one of them had been entirely forgettable. Nobody else had ever . . . how did Mike put it? Turned her into a needy puddle of a girl.
“Take it, sweetheart,” he rasped behind her. “Take it all. It’s all for you.”
His words had her hovering on the edge. And then when he slid a hand under her body and fingered their connection, she couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Oh yeah,” he said as she began to gasp. Then he moaned and shuddered against her back.
A moment later they were pancaked onto the bed, and Mike began to laugh, shaking her beneath him. “I don’t think I can move,” he said. “Hang on.” With a groan, he rolled to the side.
Lauren lay facedown a moment longer, not quite ready to look him in the eye. She’d really missed this. It wasn’t just the energetic sex—and they used to have plenty—but also the intimacy. All week long at work she wore suits and wrote the persuasive missives that helped power Nate’s global empire. She maintained her own apartment and made all her own decisions.
But sometimes a girl just needed to be spread out on the bed and properly fucked. He’d always been just the man for the job.
“You okay?” he asked eventually.
“Top shelf,” she slurred, too happy and spent to elaborate.
Chuckling, he curled his body around hers and sighed. “I’ll set my alarm for five. You don’t have to wake up when you hear it.”
“Okay,” she whispered, snuggling closer. She fell asleep to the sound of his breaths evening out beside her.
TWENTY-TWO
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
MAY 2016
All the way home from Florida, Lauren felt pregnant with a secret, if not necessarily with a baby. She sat with Mike and his teammates in the airport’s charter terminal on Saturday morning, sipping coffee and listening to the players’ smack talk. They all looked a little bleary from partying.
Except for Mike, who just looked happy. He gave her a secretive smile every time their gazes met. She felt those smiles like a soft breeze against her skin.