I still can’t believe it.
But hell if I don’t already love the kid she’s carrying. I ache to see her belly grow, to watch her smile when the baby kicks in her stomach, my hand pressed to the swelling curve.
I can see us on the beach, Ripley leaning back against my chest while we watch our son or daughter build a sand castle. A life so perfect was never in the cards for a man like me, but now that it’s a possibility, now that I can be with this girl I love, I need it with every fiber of my being.
God, I need her so bad.
There’s a hole in my heart and it yawns wider every second she’s not in my arms.
When we pull up outside her simple, two-story, Spanish-style home, my course of action is set. First, get forgiveness from Ripley, preferably before the lack of her addictive sunshine kills me. Second, spend as long as it takes earning her back. Convincing her to let me back in.
Rife with determination, I climb off my bike and stride to the driver’s side, my cock already heavy with pressure against the fly of my jeans. Ripley jolts a little when she sees me standing outside the window, but she recovers and primly pushes the door open, sniffing. “Thank you for making sure we arrived safely, Uncle Mase. We can take it from here.”
Her words might be dismissing me, but she’s ogling the fly of my jeans and turning flush, twisting her lush bottom lip between her teeth, thighs cinching together on the seat.
Oh, she loved fucking me. That much is plain.
Want to spread your legs for this dick again, don’t you, sweetheart?
It never occurred to me that I could use our attraction to my advantage, but I’m willing to employ every weapon in my arsenal to make her forgive me. To get another taste. She’s already admitted she wants to be with me. She was willing to hide her identity and seduce me to make her point. So that means she’s willing to live with everything that comes along with the man she’s obsessed beyond recognition. There’s nothing holding me back.
Stepping back a little, I shrug off my jacket. “Hold this for me a sec?” I hand her the worn-in leather and she takes it, as if on autopilot, her eyes glued to my biceps now. Hiding my dark smile, I strip off my white T-shirt, shoving it into my back pocket as far as it’ll go, leaving the rest draped down my thigh. “Hot day for a move, right?” I wink at her. “Better get started.”
Leaving her staring after me with a dropped jaw, I can’t help but chuckle a little on my way to the back of the U-Haul. I unhook the rolling door and shove it up, climbing into the truck bed to get started moving the heavier items onto the sidewalk. Eventually, Ripley gets out and unlocks the door of their new home, letting Alana inside, before crossing the lawn to me cautiously.
“I hope you’re happy.” She crosses her arms over her beautiful tits. “There are, like, a bunch of women snapping pictures of you from their kitchen windows.”
Not really caring one way or another about the picture takers, I set down the wrought-iron headboard I’m carrying, leaning it up against the side of the truck. “What about you, Ripley?” I drag my tongue along the seam of my lips, unable to stop myself from looking at her stomach, to judge if it has grown at all. “You want to snap a pic, too? You’re looking hard enough.”
Temper flares in her eyes, doing nothing to help the escalating situation in my pants. “Are you really going to act like nothing happened?”
“That would be impossible, now wouldn’t it?” I step into her space, not bothering to hide the fact that I’m inhaling her scent like a dying man. “There’s only one female I want on the face of this earth. I finally got her beneath me and she was hotter and sweeter and tighter than I could have imagined. Then I behaved like a son of a bitch and ruined everything. Spanked her when I should have been kissing every sacred inch of her body.” I look into her rapidly widening eyes. “Yeah. It’s damn well impossible to pretend that didn’t happen.”
Ripley’s chest expands on a shaky breath, hands dropping to her sides. “I think I made it pretty clear…” Her voice falls to a hushed whisper. “That I’ve m-moved on.”
My hands start to reach for her, but I catch myself just in time, curling my fingers into my palms. If we have an audience like she says, I’m not going to lay a finger on her out here on the lawn or I risk taking it too far. “Can we talk inside?”