The Bad Boy Hockey Collection: A Collection Of Single Daddy Romances

“I have the worst laugh in the world,” she confesses. “Look, even Spencer is staring at me like he can’t figure out what that godawful sound was.”

“Spencer might know what pretty is, judging by the way he’s head over heels for you, but he’s got a lot to learn about beautiful sounds,” I tell her, stealing glances behind me through the rearview mirror. “Your laugh is real, Corinne.”

“Yeah, real loud. Real obnoxious.”

“You thought I was obnoxious, too, remember?” I say, grinning. “Maybe you don’t know what obnoxious is.”

She doesn’t say anything, but the purse-lipped smirk on her face says everything. She knows I’m right, and she’s left to ponder what I’ve just said while I drive to my place. Her sudden quietness confirms that she is, in fact, thinking about my comment, and I relish in that fact.

Because it means she’s, in a round about way, thinking about me. And I’ll take that however I can get it.

I pull the Explorer into my driveway and kill the ignition. Corinne doesn’t wait for me to get out of the front seat before she is undoing her seatbelt and reaching for Spencer’s car seat straps.

“You’re pretty comfortable with him,” I muse, noticing how heavy my son’s eyelids are.

“Am I being too familiar? I’m sorry.” She has just pulled him from the seat and she makes to hand him over to me.

I hold my hands up, stopping her. “No. God no. I’m just surprised, that’s all,” I tell her. “He likes you, so as long as you’re wanting to hold him, that’s more than fine with me.” I lean in. “Because I understand what he’s going through, I think. I like you, too.”

Heat creeps up into Corinne’s cheeks. I see her take a deep breath in, but she holds it in, her eyes unable to stay fixed on mine, flitting to me then past me before she looks away and turns from me. “We should get Spencer inside,” she says weakly. “He’s fading fast.”

My tongue crosses my bottom lip, but I nod and lead her into the house. Inside, we don’t talk but I guide Corinne, with Spencer still in her arms, through the house into his nursery. It’s a three-bedroom house, but other than the open-concept living room and kitchen, it’s a relatively small, one-floor home. Spencer’s room is at the end of the hallway, and most nights I sleep on the futon I’ve set up in his room beside his crib, just so I know for sure he’s okay throughout the night.

Now, I watch as Corinne’s eyes scan over the futon, but she focuses on placing Spencer in the crib, a faint smile playing on her lips as she listens to the halfhearted protests and sleepy cooing coming from his little mouth.

“He fights it every step of the way,” I whisper into Corinne’s ear as she stares down at him, coming to her side to lean my arms on the railing of the crib. “He’s not one for sleeping if he doesn’t have to.”

She seems to be concentrating so hard on Spencer that when she turns her head a moment later and presses her lips to mine, I’m taken aback. For a split second, at least. Once my brain has caught up to the sensation my body is feeling, however, all remnants of shock are replaced by unabashed desire to kiss her back, to caress the soft flesh of her lips with mine and feel the shiver of need coursing through her body as it transfers to mine where our mouths touch.

“I’m not much for sleeping, either,” she whispers to me, pulling away only far enough to leave her lips lingering dangerously close to mine. “Not if we don’t have to.”

Her hazel eyes are haunting as they stare into mine and search for whatever she thinks she needs to find in them. If it’s permission she wants, some kind of concrete proof that I’m just as interested in her as she’s finally admitted to herself she is in me, I don’t know what else I can do to make her see that.

Flirting hasn’t worked.

Inviting her out on a date hasn’t worked.

So, I kiss her again, this time more hungrily. I taste her as my tongue passes her parted lips, a low groan rising up in my throat as the warmth and deliciousness of her mouth overwhelms my senses. I pull away a moment later like I’ve just been electrified by her essence, and maybe I have.

With a glance down at Spencer to confirm he’s still sleeping soundly, I reach hastily for the baby monitor with one hand. My other hand finds Corinne’s and I entwine my fingers with hers, dragging her from the room without another word.

Outside the door, I pull it shut and tuck the baby monitor in my back pocket. I don’t hesitate then to grab Corinne by the waist and pull her to me, my mouth finding hers again. My own breath is already labored, my chest heaving with the weight of how badly I crave her, and I devour her mouth like robbing her own breath may save me somehow.

I need this woman, now. She’s managed to play about in my mind and in my deepest thoughts over the past few days, luring my consciousness into a decadent game of imagining what this would be like—to have her, to be with her, to possess and claim her body as my own.

Now, as I push her up against the wall just outside th

e door, my hands dipping under the hem of her sweater, feeling the heated, soft flesh of her abdomen under my fingertips, I know that no image my brain could ever conjure up will ever come close to the reality of having her sexy body against mine.

The desperate moans and whimpers that escape her mouth and reverberate on her tongue as it massages with mine are only adding to the blazing fire that burns inside me, crashing through my resolve to reveal my inner animal and making my hard erection strain painfully against the fly of my jeans.

“Corinne.” I say her name as a breathless plea, leaning forward to push myself against her, pinning her to the wall. “Corinne, I want you,” I confess, my mouth trailing down the side of her neck, nipping and licking as I make my way to her collarbone. “And, believe me, if we go into that bedroom, I’ve got no intentions of sleeping, either.”

Chapter Nine

Corinne

There is no need for Brody to admit his desire for me in that instance; I can feel the proof of it against my belly as he presses up against my aching body.